As some of you who read this might know I have a YouTube channel. I’ve been showing off my weekly comic book hauls on that channel for just over ten years. For the last few years I’ve also been hosting a show on Friday nights with my friends Paulo, Wilson, and sometimes Chris where we sit around and talk comic books from 6-9PM. We have a good time.
One thing I was talking about this past Friday night (September 27) was why I love comic books. They are my favorite medium. I’ve talked about this idea about why I love comics a few times over the years but I don’t think I’ve ever written it down. So I thought I would do that here.
They way I describe why I love comic books is to compare them to movies (and TV) and books. I like both of those too by the way. I am a reader not only of comic books but also of regular books. I usually read a novel when I’m on the train commuting. I also usually watch on hour or two of TV every night before I go to bed. Each of those three mediums has its own experience.
Let’s start off with reading. When I read a book the words on the page create images in my head. They might not even be literal images all the time. They might just be a place in my head where the story takes place. Either way the story is not happening on the page. The story is happening in my mind. My mind uses the words on the page to create the story. That’s why some people find reading hard. They have to create the story in their head and that’s not easy for everyone. Of course the quality of the writing matters too.
When writing is good I can disappear into another world. People who praise novels usually talk about how it brings them to another time and place. That’s why people like it. They can be transported out of their lives in into someone else’s. The written word is transformed by someone reading it into an experience for the reader.
Movies, TV, and moving pictures on the other hand work a lot differently. The movie creates the world that we then move into. There is no onus on the viewer to create or imagine anything. We move into the movie maker’s world with our eyes and ears but not as much with our minds and/or imaginations. We don’t need to. The world is created for us to be taken to through our eyes and ears.
You can get into or escape into a movie just like you can in a book but the imaginary space they created in our minds is different. The imaginary space a book creates is almost all in our minds or imaginations. There is no dragon but the one we picture as we read a story about a dragon. In a movie the space still takes place a little bit in our heads but is mostly on the screen. They’ve made a dragon for us and we can see it on screen.
A lot more people watch movies as compared to read books because watching movies is easier. It’s more passive and demands less energy from us. A book makes us use our imagination or mind’s eye and that takes some energy and concentration. Maybe not a lot but more than a movie. It’s just a little bit harder to read than it is to watch.
Now we come to comic books. They are, of course, different than both movies and novels. They’re even different than looking at a painting or photograph. Comic have both writing and pictures in them and the pictures are generally drawn by an artist. Sometimes the artist does the writing too but often the writer is a separate person from the artist. So comic books are art, writing, and pages.
I’m a big fan of art and words paired together. Even if it’s not a comic book. A lot of the art I’ve made has words in it. Some of the same stuff I’m about to write about comics applies to all words and pictures art.
I often hear the question asked by comic book fans, “Which is more important? The art or the writing?” This is where I usually point the impossibility of answering that question because the art is at least half the writing. You can separate the words from the art but not the writing from the art. As a matter of fact there are comic books with no words in them. There is still writing though. The way the art tells the story is the writing.
When I’m reading a comic book, unlike a regular book, the writing does not create a space in my head where I am imagining the story. The artist has already imagined the story and the pictures are right there. The words and pictures combine to create a space in my imagination that tells the story. It’s not quite a space deep in my mind like a novel creates but a space that’s in my mind yet hovers above the printed page. My imagination blends the art and words together into the story they are telling. That’s how I get into a comic.
The writing part of the art is the visual storytelling. How the panels are composed, what is being shown, what angle is it being shown at, what is not being shown, what is happening between the panels, how big or small the panels are, what order the panels are in, how time moves between panels, what happens on page turns, and a lot of other stuff is all part of the writing of comic book art.
In what style the art is drawn is more of the art part of a comic book. How the drawings are presented is more the writing part of a comic book. There has to be a lot going on in both of them so they, along with the words, can create that space half on the page and half in my imagination.
It’s even tough to tell if I will like a comic before I read it. I can flip through a comic and be attracted to the art and maybe read a page or two but until I actually sit down and read it I don’t know. I have to “Read” the art and the writing together. Sometimes I’ll like the art to look at but it doesn’t read well. Sometimes the words don’t read well either. If both aren’t working together then that space in my mind is not created. It’s like watching a bad movie that you just can’t get into. You may as well turn it off. But when then work together it’s a beautiful thing.