Every once in a while, I hear a parent say, “I just can’t get my child to read a real book. All they want to read are comic books.” My first question is usually, “Where did you find an honest to goodness comic book?” The parents reply, “You know,..those graphic things.”
It is very hard for me as the Media Queen not to smite them in their ignorance. Graphic novels have come into their own as an established genre of literature. During the 1980′s, the form became established with the ground breaking achievements of Art Spiegelmen and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. These artist/authors established the form as a serious genre with the receipt of literary awards for graphic novels.
Art Spiegelmen won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 with his work, Maus, A Survivor’s Tale. It is a biography of the author’s father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor as told through a beast fable depicted in graphic novel form.
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons won the Hugo Award in 1988 for their work, Watchmen. It depicts an alternate history during the Vietnam era where superheroes emerge to help the US win the Vietnam War.
Numerous other graphic novel works have won literary prizes, but these two works helped to establish the genre as a serious literary work. Graphic novels have become a staple of American culture for our youth. It would be wise to become familiar with this genre.
The Comic Book Doctor, Jason Tondro, goes a step further in his new work, Superheroes of the Round Table, Comics Connections to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, argues that the modern graphic novel is elementally the same as the romance literature of medieval society. I personally can’t wait to read this work.
