Are they even literature? Are they too mixed media? Do you think they rely too much on visual stimulus to convey emotion and plot? yes. For people who scoff at comics, I've had the same emotional impact from reading graphic novels as well as traditional books.
" Someone came up with the term graphic novel. These readers latched on to it; they were simply interested in a way that could validate their continued love of Green Lantern or Spider-Man without appearing in some way emotionally subnormal. This is a significant rump of the superhero-addicted, mainstream-addicted audience. I don't think the superhero stands for anything good. I think it's a rather alarming sign if we've got audiences of adults going to see the Avengers movie and delighting in concepts and characters meant to entertain the 12-year-old boys of the 1950s.""
I'm not a huge fan of superhero movies as well but The Incredibles is GOAT
Asher Smith
The writers constantly changing on books makes the characters not consistent and it leads to having 500 different versions of heroes
Levi Roberts
I don't want to speculate on what can be done in graphic novels but I gave it my best shot and found the very best of them to be about the same quality as an above good novel. Not great, not amazing, but better than average. I gave Sandman, Swamp Thing, Transmetropolitan, Watchmen and V for Vendetta a shot (plus a few other ones that aren't as famous) before giving up on the medium.
Jason Nguyen
Comics aren't literature: different art form, but some may be considered art. The bad rep is due to capeshit.
Connor Peterson
Do they have to be similar?
I like both Comics and Books, but for entirely different reasons. When I want to quickly read something, get lost in the art, and maybe have a chuckle or something I read comics. When I want to sit down for a few hours, get lost in a world and flex my imagination muscles I read a book.
Nolan Hernandez
Because comics are either simplistic capeshit for manchildren or shallow slice of life hipster garbage.
Nolan Rogers
Marvel was aiming for the college aged audience by the mid 60s.
Joseph Morgan
Despite the similarities that they share, I would consider them two different mediums. Both are just as capable of being art as well as producing trash.
Logan Martinez
hmmmm.......I've been meaning to give those "edgier" more popular and maybe more thought provoking comics like Maus and Transmetropolitan a shot but yeah most of em kinda follow that formula
Samuel Foster
Huh, cool way of thinking about it.
Angel Price
they have went full cuck recently it's really cringy
Christian Anderson
>yes No Visuals are an integral part of the medium and you can't rely on them "too much". Could an opera rely on music "too much"? No, the great artists know how to balance various elements for the best possible effect. They are not literature because they are a different medium, their tools are radically different. If anything, comics are closer to movies.
Amen
Not true unless currently popular american comics = all comics
Sandman and Transmetropolitan are heavily overrated (the latter is in fact downright garbage). Swamp Thing is so-so, it is a bit pretentious and visually too connected to the cancerous capeshit tradition. Watchmen, otoh, is fairly complex and innovative, some of Moore's techniques might be lost on you if you're not familiar with traditional comics. (And it is overall a very good, if not great story.) Let's be honest, you didn't get a particularly good picture of comics, no art form should be discarded after you've experienced 10 works of largely dubious quality.
Easton Flores
>If anything, comics are closer to movies.
This is true. Now that I think about it, preparing comics kinda reminds me of traditional animation with the almost sequential flow and progression. Comics always felt to me like a bastard of a book and a movie but it only makes sense when you can make tonnes of $$$ from turning it into a movie rather than it remaining a book.
Grayson Williams
What do you consider to be the apex of graphic novels?
Cameron Reyes
For current work, David Petersen's Mouse Guard has been getting better and better, despite starting with a very dusty premise. The newest volume, The Black Axe, is impressive on several levels. Cursed Pirate Girl by Jeremy Bastian is painstakingly and lushly done in a style that is unusual these days. Saga (written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples) is a great space opera. Multiple Warheads, by Brandon Graham, Nick Pitarra's Manhattan Projects, Abishek Singh's Krishna, Mezzo and Pirus' King of the Flies, Colleen Doran, Ted McKeever, Calum Alexander Watt, James A. Owen, Ken Meyer Jr., Mike Dringenberg, Christopher Mitten, Jonathan Hickman, Mike May, Kako...
Ayden Green
They are pretty much always either capeshit, YAshit with pictures or borderline child porn
Isaiah Long
WTF? Go grab virtually anything published by D&Q or Fantagraphics. Jesus.
Nathan Scott
Comics are the medium. They're just as capable of telling good stories as film or prose writing or animation.
I will repeat again: they are a MEDIUM. COMICS ARE A MEDIUM. While unfortunately most comics are capeshit and most capeshit is garbage, that does not, in fact, mean the medium is worthless.
This right here is WHY I write comic books. To try and show people what they medium can do.
Also desu I think the term 'graphic novel' is just entirely superfluous and more than a little smacking of - "Oh, we're not REALLY! Comics! We're important! We have a fancy name so we aren't low-brow!" kind of like how the 2014 reissue of Watchmen calls the medium "graphic storytelling" because lolmarketing.
Kayden Hall
I think the sandman comics and watchmen are great. Other than that I haven't read one I liked since I was a kid
Oliver Allen
You can't help him, he's a vampire that feeds on jimmies.
He doesn't even care about what comes out of his mouth as long as it gets a rise.
Let him fade gently into the tinnitus.
Jordan Hernandez
>Transmetropolitan
I read that expecting a dark comedy about a dystopia. What I got was clumsy preaching for an audience of Redditors.
Josiah Miller
>Why do comics get such a bad rep? Read pic related and you'll know.
Chase Peterson
>The Incredibles is GOAT
It really is, I wish actual capeshit was like this.
Jaxon Sanchez
Sequential art which has a long history dating back. However it has never had the sheer commitment to craft as literature, thus we're mostly stuck with cut out superheros
Gavin Phillips
>Hickman You were doing great up until this part. Hickman is worse than YA writers.
Daniel White
>I don't generally read very much at all. This is who you capeshit fans have been dickriding all this time?
Henry Lee
I believe they'd care more about this: >I haven't read any superhero comics since I finished with Watchmen. I hate superheroes. I think they're abominations. They don't mean what they used to mean. They were originally in the hands of writers who would actively expand the imagination of their nine- to 13-year-old audience. That was completely what they were meant to do and they were doing it excellently. These days, superhero comics think the audience is certainly not nine to 13, it's nothing to do with them. It's an audience largely of 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-year old men, usually men.
Isaac Richardson
There's a lot of great are out there, but the writing doesn't tend to be on the same level. I think there is a real issue of: if you are a good writer and want to write, you write novels. You don't tend to gravitate to comics. But really, if some good writers actually hooked up with decent artists they could make a lot money. There is a real vacuum of talent.
Thomas Nguyen
In my uneducated opinion I think Southern Bastards does a great job at balancing visual and written elements.