Author's Note: Before you read this, please be informed that I am by no means bashing comics as a genre. This is merely a thought experiment of mine where I figure out why I can’t get into comics. These are my opinions and mine alone. Don’t read this if you get offended by opinions that don’t match your experience.
Okay, first, don’t jump down my throat. Let me start by saying that I don’t think comics are bad or in any way inferior to any other written form. In fact, they take a lot more effort, pizazz, and let's face it, talent to create something like a comic. So, let me explain what I mean.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately when it comes to formats and my preferential exposure to different things. Let me say, it's a bit of a rabbit hole, so try to stick with me.
I can easily say that while each type of base format has its pros and cons, there is certainly a preference, for me at least. While I love the sturdiness and survivability of hardcover books, they are heavy, or can be if they are lengthy, and unwieldy in most situations I find myself in for reading. I love paperbacks and their ability to travel and easily be held in almost any scenario, but let's face it, they aren’t durable. E-books give sort of the best option for a lot of people in that they are super portable, durable, and discreet if you read or write the sort of things that I do. The only problem is, as a tangible person who likes old books and the sensory experience of holding the book, they don’t do much for that. Overall though, I’d say eBooks are my current preference, just for the convenience factor, if nothing else. I never have to worry about finishing a book when I’m out and not having another. I have thousands at my fingertips with eBooks.
I know you’re probably thinking, but Viv, what does this have to do with comics at all?
It sort of ties in nicely, actually.
So, let’s start with the obvious. Comics aren’t easy to read in eBook format. Not really. Sure, if you have a tablet that you use, they can work well for that. But if I’m reading an eBook, I want the e-reader. It's smaller and easier to handle, and comics just don’t really work in that format.
Here’s the big one though. I’m super imaginative. I like to live with the story as it unfolds in my head, almost like a movie. I like to read through the paragraphs of prose and imagine I’m there with the characters, experiencing the things they are, or living in the fantasy with them. I immerse myself fully when I’m reading.
For me, that means that I need all those little details and bits of prose. I want to watch as the character takes in their environment and explains to me what I’m seeing, but then my imagination is free to run with it. It’s also why I like vaguer descriptions of things and why I get irritated more often than not when movies are made from books. I have this image in my mind that’s really only mine about what this story means and what everything looks like. I can let my imagination wander and create, even though the author has done most of that for me, to some degree. My interpretation of those things is left up to me. I can’t do that in comics. The art on the page shows me exactly what the story is. It gives me the exact image that the author wants to portray, and I have very little to interpret with it. There’s also the little nuanced things that we don’t get that I love to read about. All the things the character is feeling. The depth of action that I can’t fully appreciate in a page of panels. There’s so many things you can say artfully in a two-page span of prose, and most of that has to be left out in a 2 page spread in a comic. There just isn’t space. You can’t put every single little thing there.
Don’t get me wrong. I admire the hell out of comic creators. They have so much work to do to capture everything that’s needed for you to understand what’s happening. They don’t get an entire page or five of prose to describe the world. You get a panel, and you fill it in as much as you can, but then you have to trust that they understand you. You get to tell me the most important points of the story, and that’s it. But what about the rest? What is the character internalizing that I don’t get to read because you can only make so many panels? There’s already so much work going into it, I would never ask you to give me all of that. You can’t.
And it’s not that I don’t want the story. I absolutely do. I’ve never gotten all the way through a comic about DC or Marvel heroes, but I love learning about them. I love reading about their characters and what they go through in something like a fan recap page or a Wikipedia page about that character, or my husband telling me the storyline that happened in one random series of one-off short runs by a particular group. I just can’t read the comics. There isn’t enough there for me. I want the entire thing. All of it! All the little nuanced things in a whole ass book about their adventures. I want to read the long prose and feel the things they are feeling through their words and internal thoughts. I need to connect with them in this way, or I can’t at all.
Yeah, maybe it's weird that I don’t feel the same way about movies? I can watch the story unfold like that just as I could in books, but for some reason, I just don’t vibe with the comics. Give me a novelization of them, and I’m in a happy place. I would read them all!
I think this also ties into my shying away from serialized fiction. In a world where we no longer have to wait for everything to come to us little by little and things are just there for us to consume them in their entirety, I can’t read little snippets. I get bored waiting for the next issue, and I move on. In this world where we have everything at our fingertips now, I want all of it at once. This isn’t really new for me. I’d much rather start a series knowing it's complete and I can hungrily gobble down all the books right after each other. I can wait until an entire TV series drops and binge all the episodes in a row.
But comics never really end, right? The story may take on a new writer, or a new artist, but it's still the main hero/MC. They may move character arcs and new plot points in time and spawn new things from it, but it's still their ongoing story. They are immortalized in that way where we never really see the end of them. Even if they somehow die, someone else takes the mantle. Someone else ‘becomes’ the ‘new’ them. There isn’t an end, and in a way, I don’t think there should be. These characters get to live forever in our minds, and the love of them is passed down through space and time, and it's always developing and adding more stories. New things for future readers to fall in love with in the here and now. There’s a beauty in the permanence of it that you can’t really get from most other media. Sure, there are exceptions if you’re willing to break the boundaries, but most people don’t. And yes, there are one-off comics that do end after the story is told, but the nature of mainstream comics is that they can and do continue. (Let’s not get into fanfic, as that’s an entirely different animal, even though some of the same points can be made. For another post maybe.)
I wish my brain worked differently and I could get more into them. I would love to have so many that my shelves are more overflowing than they already are with books. I want stacks and stacks of them and to be able to read more and more. There’s a never-ending supply of this reading medium that I just can’t get into. Believe me, I have tried. I’ve tried to pick up graphic novels or comics of some of my favorite shows after they’ve ended. I just couldn't get into them. I’d much rather just read novelizations from fans or writers, and I have absolutely done this.
Now that I’ve said all that, I’ll also say this. I will ALWAYS support comic book creators. ALWAYS. Like I said before. There is so much talent that goes into creating these works of art, and that’s exactly what they are. Art. They aren’t my thing, but they are for millions of people. So, when I tell people that I would love to read their stuff, but I need to wait until it’s done, this is a big reason why. I wish I could read serialized things like comics or even Vella stories. I can’t. Finish it, and then we’ll talk. In the meantime, I’m still going to hype you. I still appreciate the creativity you bring. I still want to support you, even if it's not in a traditional way.
Keep creating, and I’ll keep supporting. That’s what I do. If you have a favorite comic, I’d love to hear about it. Tell me their stories and let me fall in love with them through you.
Are there any formats of things you can’t read? Are there things you are drawn to because of the format they occupy? Let me know. I’d love to hear from you.
