Final Blog Post!! Comics or Novels

Given our readings this semester, what can a comic or graphic novel do 'better' than a traditional story or novel? What are its (comic or graphic novel) limitations?

The obvious difference between comics/graphic novels and traditional novels is that the former merges image and text language to portray the intended plots, themes, etcetera, whereas the latter implements only text. For this reason, comics and graphic novels (or at least the ones we have encountered) tend to include dialogue as their primary source of textual description, using images to fill in the rest of that which is described by narrative text. To me it seems that the only limitation posed by the stereotypical comic medium, regards depth of characters and plots. Since, typically, comics rely on dialogue and brief narrative text boxes (e.g. stating date, time or location) it is difficult to directly convey the character traits without defying the boundaries thought to confine the medium. The only times character depth was really teased out, was in The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. Although both of these examples do fit into the comic categorization, the reasons for which they were able to develop characters further than any of the previous works we interacted with, is that they utilized components outside of the traditional realm. In The Dark Knight returns, Frank Miller diverged from the traditional panel format and therefore he included floating text, which allowed him to portray the thoughts of Bruce Wayne in far greater depth than had been previously seen. Furthermore in Watchmen, Moore inserted chapters from traditional novels to portray Hollis Mason's autobiography in addition to excerpts from correspondences, historical documents, reports and academic articles. Although these inclusions did facilitate a character depth greater than we had perviously experienced in comics (e.g. Superman), without breaking the mold for the traditional comic form, Moore would not have been able to achieve the level of depth that he did. Therefore, while comics are a more overt and engaging visually, an aspect that I, an art history minor, am drawn to, audiences seek these stories (especially in comics abiding by traditional format) in order to gain a complex mental experience, rather than a complex narrative.