What Do Comics Do Better?

Comics/graphic novels and print narratives aren't apples and oranges, but they are different enough that comparing them is difficult. Graphic narratives' great differentiating factor is the combination of text and image. Comics are concise - where a print novel can spend a paragraph setting a scene, a comic can use a large panel or splash page. Their strength lies in the inclusion of motion in the drawings, how they immerse the reader in the story, and how the story is told through words, images and color, and layout.

You could argue that having the images provided to readers reduces their participation in the story relative to print narratives. Print narratives give verbal descriptions and require the reader to construct a scene in their mind - no two people's scenes will be exactly the same. While this may not be a storytelling limitation, providing the images to the reader does limit their participation in making the scene or characters. However, comics still require closure between panels (to link them together into a fluid sequence) and within them (to provide motion, and depending on the panels before and after, to fill in the action based on a given snapshot). This is all imagination and reader participation. Print narratives also give the reader much more concrete information about characters' emotional processes. In print emotions can be directly named or conveyed through describing a character's body language/tone, whereas comics have to rely on visual cues (or, in the case of tone of voice, how the speech balloon and font are designed) that the reader interprets.

Comics' limitation is that, most of the time, if a piece of information can't be stated in a short text box or conveyed in dialogue it has to be shown in the image. Comics' strength is how versatile images are.