Graphic Narrative/A World

When I think about traditional storytelling, my first instinct is to discuss its human quality. How the best stories--the ones that stick with us--tell us something about ourselves or our relation to the larger world. And this is not to say that the best stories are realistic, but that even those outlandish and otherworldly tales retain some element of a human soul.

In this vein, I think graphic narrative allows us a fuller picture of a world and an opportunity to investigate that picture a little further than a text-only narrative may allow. Speaking from a writer's point of view, it can be difficult to achieve an exact image in a work without a precise and illuminated control of language. Those writers that draw us into their scenes, show us a character's gasp, force us face-to-face with their world are few and far between and many texts are enjoyed without this quality or with some degree of it. But comics, through the addition of stylized and gripping imagery that coincides with the narrative, can avoid this gap.

Not only does the imagery make for a more holistic reading experience, but it affords us more detail to appreciate and critique. This  gives us a better sense of what the comic is trying to accomplish, and possibly even a glimpse of what its artists intended. And from an analytic, literary perspective this is incredibly inviting. We are able to peel back a bit of that reader/audience divide and understand a story with more authorial accuracy.

So what do comics do 'better' than traditional stories? I suppose they offer more to the reader: more reality, more depth, more aesthetic enjoyment. But this is not to say that novels or text-only media cannot offer these things, just that comics lay them out more readily.