Why Comics?

7/19/2019
By Alex Ness

A rather long time ago I was told by a professor that serious minds need more than comic books to grow. I didn't disagree that we need more than comics, but I absolutely disagreed with the tone that came along with the dismissal of comics, as a whole. The final paper in his class earned me a bad grade.  Over time I've received lots of bad grades, so I don't really care. I've no doubt my intellectual refusal to abandon comics influenced his capricious grading of my work. I might not be a genius, but I had a friend who taught in university at the time, he read my work in question, and said, "There is nothing unscholarly about the piece. You chose a subject matter that challenged the reader, but probably, the reader who gave the grade wasn't interested in going beyond his preconceived ideas, both of your writing and his areas of interest and taste." It was still a class I got a B in, but, in almost all scenarios, the quality was there, it just didn't fit his paradigms. 

When in grad school I suggested to a professor, by using the mechanics of a RPG we might get the students to think like a character during a first contact event. I was told, RPGs or D&D as he referred to it, is for weak minds who need tawdry entertainment.  He then added, people who like them also like comic books, and low brow movies.  Then said, I need to be more serious in my thinking.

Well, I think both professors were/are wrong.  Even if I don't dispute the concept that most comics in the long timeline of their existence, weren't aimed at serious minds, it doesn't mean there have not been any comics created and aimed at them.  Comics are sequential art, paper based films, and might be created to entertain.  But my favorite stories of all time are far from superfluous or silly.  And even those few that could be perceived as silly, every could use a silly laugh now and then.  People who don't like to laugh need to go take a giant shit.

But I think more than just taste differences, people who hate comics, or just don't think they are anything worth reading, don't know how the art form has evolved.  They perhaps don't understand how reading words and pictures are not childish behaviors or mindsets, it is simply the medium's conventions.  I have read a comic with no words, so, if you prefer to think of comics as having art, it is art that tells a story by presenting it all in sequential pictures. I know no one in my present life who hates comics like the professors did, but I have no doubt their outlook is shared still by many.  That's fine.  My mind is as serious as it requires.  Which is more so than most, I am willing to bet.