It isn't the fault of comics

Comics are a medium of creativity that combine both pictures and words, which tell a narrative story.

And, first and foremost, it is still reading.

I have discussed the gatekeeping of reading on this platform before and I have touched on the gatekeeping of comics specifically, but I would like to take a moment to dig a bit deeper into comic reading as its own piece.

I have been an avid comic reader for a very long time. Mostly I started with manga, as, at the time when I was growing up, there was surprisingly few comics or graphic novels directed at children. Are manga often directed at teens? Yes, but it shows a good example of both what I wanted to read and the limitations of what was available to me. It was near the tail-end of my experience with reading in the children's and teen section of my local library that I started to hear complaints about children reading comics. That it wasn't 'enough.'

I also think this was when the cracks in how people were learning to read started to show. Comics were an easy gateway to reading where books were a bit harder. I also noticed the uptick in comic (and manga) reading started around teenage-hood. Not just because peers were reading those kinds of things, so it was easier to relate, but because there was also a struggle to actually find time to read longer form books in anything like a timely fashion. It was important to note that it wasn't anyone who read comics who were saying it 'wasn't reading.' It tended to be random adults, parents, grandparents, or snobby people who weren't actually asking the children why they were reading these kinds of things.

If they'd bother to ask me, it was because I appreciated it as an art form just as much as a traditional book. And I had the receipts to prove it - at the time I was reading nearly 500 books a year, a combination of full length novels, comics, picture books, and anything else I could get my hands on. That was the whole point really. I liked to get that all-round perspective.

The rise in comic reading is the rise of an era. It is cheaper to produce pictures in books, so people are more readily able to affordably buy them. It is quicker to read, so a consumerist society can knock one out in a lunch break without having to worry about forgetting what happens. In the age of the internet and getting a story fast, for better or worse, comics are there. One shouldn't blame a comic for being a help in a bad situation. The comics offer creativity, a story, and they are just as valid as any other form because they fill a space. Penny dreadfuls used to be consumed in a very similar fashion. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott was released in a serial, so would have been consumed quickly like a modern day comic would be. It's hard to say that something is 'bad' when it has always been a product of human creative society to desire something easy and quick to read that gives us a sense of closeness with creativity.

So while my explanation of comics being popular being a product of an internet age is an 'answer' I also don't think it's a simple answer. I think that it has as much nuance as joy for creativity and art can ever have. So saying comics aren't 'worth it' tends to have so many issues.

Pick up a comic. You might find it worth it.