I wish I could get excited about graphic novels. I looked at Maus many years ago and tried to get into it. I couldn’t. I didn’t like having prefab images put my own imagination on hold. I didn’t like the lack of complexity I enjoy so much in a literary novel (no graphics). It was like watching tv in print. Everything is oversimplified. Reduced to its lowest common denominator.
Oddly, I loved comics as a child. I inhaled them, swallowed them whole. Stacks and stacks of regular and classic comics. I couldn’t get enough of them. I can remember walking blocks, my piles cradled in my arms in front of me, to keep an appointment with another kid who was willing to trade. It was serious stuff, these exchanges. I would go home with my new supply and bury myself until I’d read them all. They may have been minimally artful, but they had my attention. I was only interested then in their plots.
But why was I able to embrace them then? I think it’s because as a child, I didn’t have the same need for depth and complication. I was perfectly happy to have someone else give me the images and a simple text. I saw something similar happening with two of my husband’s grandchildren, twins who attended private schools in England. The not only spoke and read Latin, French, and German, but they also were reading the classics. Still, when they visited us, they were mesmerized by our TV. It didn’t require them to give much of themselves to the viewing other than just being receptacles.
I believe comic books and graphic novels work in a similar way.