As I haven’t finished Nat Turner, and I wish to reserve all  comments for the end (i.e. next week), there is something more pressing I wish to discuss this week. It’s something relatively new to me, and something which has only surfaced recently: the idea of comics as literature. My roommate, who was an English major in college, first introduced the idea to me when we were having a discussion on some of our favorite books. She mentioned she took a Holocaust lit. class once and had to read a book called Maus, which was a graphic novel. She said it was one of the most eye-opening things she had ever read, and reading it changed her ideas about what was and was not considered literature.

I have heard similar thoughts expressed from students and professors of literature. One professor even suggested that everything written was literature, from the thousand-page novels to the obnoxious travel brochures you get in your mail. Okay, maybe she didn’t put it quite that way, but that was the sentiment I got from it. My response was very antagonistic: “Really?” I wanted to say. “Does that mean every stick figure I draw is art?” So, needless to say, I was skeptical about the whole “graphic novel” thing.

As I was reading McCloud’s Understanding Comics, however, a few things really stuck out to me. One was the way comics manipulated space, and the way a person’s senses were needed to fill in the gaps between the pictures. The baby/peekaboo image was a good one, as most children think if they cover their eyes, you can’t see them, because they don’t quite understand that not seeing you is not the same as you not seeing them. Similarly, in comics, a person’s senses are needed to fill in the gaps of what is and is not there. In a book, for example, an author typically does this for us, explaining what something looks like, and ignoring what isn’t important. The reader is left to fill in those details on his or her own. In comics, the artist draws what he wants us to see, and we fill in the gaps. We create the closure as we wish it to be, though we must complete it within the realm the author (or artist) has given us. We are left, basically, making assumptions.

The other interesting idea was the way comics manipulated time. That what is omitted is oftentimes just as important as what was included, and that the way something is drawn effects the impact is has upon the reader. It is true that harsh lines often represent a different mood than soft or curvy lines. It’s hard to imagine Charlie Brown as a homicidal maniac, because he isn’t drawn that way. The Joker, on the other hand, is hard to imagine as the kid-next-door. So the emotions represented by the art and manipulated by the artist represent a full range of emotions, just as any other piece of art does.

So, to bring it back to my initial question: Are comics (or graphic novels) literature?  I’m going to have to–at this point in time–say no, I don’t think they are. Do I think they are any less advanced or important? Not necessarily. I think they’re a medium of their own. Just because words and expressions are involved does not make them literature.  A lot of music involves words and expressions, but music is music. The lyrics might have literary elements, but the whole is not literature. Perhaps my view of literature is too canonical for most people’s taste, but if we are going to categorize, let’s at least do it consistently. Should graphic novels be considered art (as in “the arts”)? I think many should. Nat Turner certainly has the range to be included in this category. So, perhaps the question isn’t so much “are comics literature” as “are comics art?” But this is my own humble opinion.