Blog Post #3: Graphic Novels
I will admit, I’ve never found myself to be a fan of comics or graphic novels. Having friends in early teen years who enjoyed the medium immensely, I tried picking them up a few times. Notably through high school, my friends Justin, Jean Luc, and Nick – all three avid cosplayers and fiercely proud nerds – placed just-finished editions of whichever comic book or graphic novel into my hands, urging me to read it, just try it. And so I tried it. And for some reason I could never get into it.
Over time I’ve come to respect comic/illustrative storytelling more strongly as a craft, and as a distinct medium. I don’t believe legitimacy can be argued in relation to a storytelling medium without assessing the legitimacy of all storytelling mediums, and how can methods so vastly different be compared aside from the basis of their action (which is all the same function: to tell a story)?
The Pride of Baghdad was, to me, an unexpected story. While I have a decent background of knowledge about the American bombing of Baghdad, such a specific story of the zoo’s animals being unintentionally freed and their tragic demise was both unexpected and shockingly emotional.
Pride of Baghdad [visual excerpt]
While visually stunning, I do not feel the medium of the graphic novel fully conveyed the nuances that this story could hold.
Effectively, I don’t believe I can assess the legitimacy of a storytelling medium, as to me any one medium is equally “legitimate” as the next when used in appropriate contexts. However, one medium may function better for telling certain kinds of stories over other mediums, and there were aspects of The Pride of Baghdad that I feel were tense or awkward in the graphic novel format, opposed to if the story was told in straight prose.
Whether intentional or otherwise, the graphic novel and comic book has a lasting public image of being a juvenile medium, that it’s visual emphasis somehow detracts from its ability to present nuance or narrative difficulty. My stance on the “awkwardness” of some scenes in The Pride of Baghdad perhaps was clouded and influenced by that general social perception.
Graphic novels and comics, while being brought more and more into the popular canon with adaptions to screen, seem to still be retaining much of their perceived lack of “legitimacy.” In looking more broadly, however, I would argue that every storytelling medium lacks “legitimacy” when attempting some specific genre of story. A biography of Queen Victoria could not effectively be told through flash narrative. Plath’s The Bell Jar would present horribly as a Quibi short series (remember those?). And from reading The Pride of Baghdad, I feel that story could have been told with a clearer and more articulate message if presented in a more literary or nonvisual medium.
