Strengths and Limitations of Comics

A comic is better than a novel at demanding engagement from the reader. While it is common for readers to be deeply engaged with a novel and feel that a true conversation/relationship with the author is formed,  it is also easy to be a passive reader and to be a spectator rather than an active participant. The type of passive reading that is possible with a novel is not possible with a comic because the author is constantly calling upon the reader to be active and form closure in the gutters. Clearly there are varying levels of reading a comic and different levels of focus can be applied to the readings, but it is not possible for the reader to be completely passive. To read a comic is to form a partnership with the author and illustrator while the same is not necessarily true of a novel.  Whether the reader is aware of it or not he or she is instrumental in advancing the plot between each panel, it is automatic and involuntary.

I find that the greatest strength of the comic form in many ways contributes to its greatest weakness. Part of the beauty of a novel is the author’s ability to communicate something very precisely through the language that he or she choses and the relationship that various sections of text have with each other over the entirety of a book. There is a universality to what is being consumed by readers of a novel that is not present with comics. As I mentioned before, comics demand a great deal of participation and interpretation from the reader. Due to how heavily the reader is involved in the progression of the plot and the in the interpretation of what is occurring in the gutters I feel as though writers of comics do not have the ability to communicate messages with the same type of uniform precision that authors of novels can. I am not by any means saying that comics can not communicate complex and moving themes and messages but I do think that the medium is more vulnerable to the will of the reader and loses some of the control over the communication of its own meaning.