Benefits and limitations of reading a comic

A comic and a novel have their own advantages and limitations. The visuals in a comic give the readers the sensory experience; compared to the text, the visuals have greater impacts on the reader’s mind, because people’s brains can better respond to the visual information than the text. However, the visuals may limit the reader’s interpretation, because the cartoonist conveys his/her own interpretations of context through the visuals. Even though the visuals can seem limiting to the reader’s imagination, I still think that the readers should also respect the cartoonist’s interpretation of his/her own work.

Additionally, I think comic is better than a novel in the reader's’ engagement with the character and the story. Even though some novels are written in first person point of view, the readers are still considered as the third person, because the readers are reading the accounts of the narrator. In contrast, comics with panels in first person perspectives or the text written in first person perspectives are more effective in allowing the readers to superimpose themselves into the protagonist and to feel like they are experiencing the events that the protagonist is experiencing.

However, a limitation of comics is that even though comics are easy to read, I sometimes find it hard to analyze the panels. In order to fully analyze the panels, we have to look at both the text and the image of the panels and understand the significance of both. Therefore, people ,who do not have previous knowledge of analyzing the graphic novel, might not be able to grab the hidden meanings in the comic.