Adorno’s anti-comic but good comic and manga picture books (Adorno 150)
Newspaper comics are on the decline. The lack of depth and diversity to jokes has coddled its delivery. A polarising society unable to handle jokes places comedians in taboo markets. For a while all the major comics followed the CCA for guidelines on acceptable comic books. The CCA hampered any grey area and any taboos. Everything needed to be pure and positivistic. A strong conservatism sought to protect the days of old as the sexual revolution loomed large. The code wasn’t always adhered to but it was utilised to prevent any abhorrent nature. Yet the was a way around it. The big industries stopped sending their comics for approval. So they didn’t get the sticker but they still sold. Despite the efforts pushed by legislatures in the fifties for this high level conservation, it was eventually disbanded. Since the abandonment many new comics have ventured into those unforeseen areas. Dabbling is sex and race. Cultural aspects that were taboo in the previous years.
Comics are growing but even more so is manga. The value of manga in the west alone is greater than the comic book industry. Manga has a diverse genre and escapes much of the cultural taboos. Writers are brave and brazen. Experimenting with novel ideas to imprint on paper. They come in long novella occupying an entire journey. A single series illustrated in a novel. This experimentation tends to void western binaries and instead sympathises with the devil, inserts unsettling sexuality and favours gory credentials. It isn’t afraid to attack taboos and play with them. For some time certain manga generated anime adapted in English censored key aspects to protect children. Manga are more traitorous to the rebellious child. There is a growing acceptance of the genre in the west. Instead of it being a geeky weird thing. Others are finding the meaning behind the complex characterisation. While this is far from perfect there is a desire to flush out the plot line in a nuanced way instead of a routine mannerism (manga genres presumably repeat themselves as well). The surplus of strips allows more freedom and opportunity to find something everyone likes.
What is interesting is the interest itself. There is something about the picturesque persona that is intriguing. Despite the childish teasing that accompanies an illustrated book, there is something to be said of graphic novels. It is basically television in a book form. Instead of the visual continuity on screen, the reader juxtaposes the adjacent pictures on the page to fill in the illustration. A little more manual labour but pretty similar. The picturesque may not be a motion picture but it is depicting the situation on paper. There is a certain level of immaturity that takes away the power of graphic novels. Newspaper comics are childish and ironic. There is a lack of text but it is made up in the visual. Television has replaced the need for graphic novels since the visual on the screen. While they have a dual system when a Harry Potter book gives you the text and the movie gives you the illustration. There is reason to keep them apart. They mess with one another. Having a little text under the figure of the character’s movement seemingly undermines the storytelling. Stealing imagination of the novella it shoves the image in the reader’s face.
Graphic novels attempt to bring a visual aid to the literary faculty. A picture is able to properly depict a situation with all its context instead of a text that inquires estimates. The use of specific terminology plus precise punctuation partially conveys the image. The entire paragraph must be interpreted to understand the scene. Similarly, today a text message may seem off-putting without proper contextualisation. Letters are signs for symbols that convey a picture. The logographic model of hanzi in the same way better conveys the proper image because it it a symbol for the sign. Words are two steps behind while the illustration itself is the perfect presentation. There is nothing to imagine. The text paints a picture in one’s head but whether that is the intent of the author is rather crude. A great example is the book Wonder. The author tells you that Auggie’s face is worse than you imagine so you imagine it worse than first deduced. Yet the reader and the author’s conclusions illustrated on paper are different. The movie adaptation is the director telling the viewer this is how he looks (though I personally believe this was a boneheaded move as the unknown of his face gave more credence to his character).
Every novel is a writer communicating his ideas to the reader. Yet in actuality it is the reader conjuring what he thinks the writer intended. The same words and structures are used but put all the pieces together and the final result would still be different. The imagination is expansive as well as the memorial category that interjects its perspective on the configuration of the character’s looks or character’s house. There is a certain genus to this. Especially in fantasy novella where the world building is even nastier. Tolkien created languages on top of mythic characters. To be fair some of the Tolkien retrospective creation is a byproduct of the film adaptations. Legolas is the model of elves even if Tolkien never describes him that way. Hermione will be Emma Watson. Her face will be projected in the imagination. Film has disrupted any reread but at the onset the character is Harry in one’s own imagination and then it becomes Radcliffe and now it’s Radcliffe. Film adaptations steal the imagination of the reader by inserting a canonical model as if this was the author’s intent. Given Rowling never met Radcliffe nor sought to cast him in a film meant that she also had someone else in mind. The novel is the meeting point for author and reader to surmise their fictional beliefs in silence.
Reading is a medium to understanding the writer’s intent. The story isn’t about the appearance of the subjects. It is about imaginative product. To formulate a story in the mind and enjoy the fictional universe swirling around the brain. The words are transmitted into the brain scrambled to make sense and illustrated in the brain. There is a sense of anonymity. The story describes but to what it is describing exactly is subjective. Some may ban a book because they believe to be problematic or they may permit it because while there is gore, the gore cannot be seen. Books banned like 1984 and A Clockwork Orange were banned on ideological grounds not due the imagery. On the other hand due to the CCA some comics were banned because of their depiction of villains and violence. Maus is a good example of a graphic novel that was banned on both imagery grounds from an ideological standpoint of depicting germans as cats and poles as pigs. While Life of Pi (though banned on religious grounds) painted people as animals and was allowed. If it is the imagination it can’t hurt anyone (for the most part). A book read in high school called Little Bee had an explicit sex scene but since it was written instead of illustrated it was allowed (though curse words could be used to censor in the opposite direction given the lack of text in graphic novels).
Both have standards and lines not to be crossed. Yet in a perfect world, the writer and reader share a voluntary relationship. Here are some words not create something. It is similar to a colouring book that provides the picture but the drawer chooses which colours. How it looks is different than what intended. An art teacher who provides the paint and brushes while the student creates the masterpiece with her imagination. The foundation is set, all the signs are interconnected, the reader need only to turn on the program. Graphic novels are different. The graphic novel is a foreign film with subtitles. The sounds are irrelevant so the show can be watched silently with the subtitles making up for the lacking audio. Similar to the relationship between a director and viewer is the author and reader for graphic novels. There is no room for imagination. The author supplies the entire corpus. The author invites the reader to engage the text while the director invites the viewer to observe the screen. The former requires proactivity and the latter passivity. Images are easily intuited while words need to be channeled to internalise. Graphic novels are adornments to readers to enjoy the ride. Unlike childhood books that have illustrations that reflect the text, in graphic novels text accompanies the illustration. The image is primary with some contextualised textuality.
Illustrations get straight to the paint. It is much easier to learn from a YouTube video than from a reading wiki how page. Mimicking the video is enhancing and easily manipulated while the words need to be translated into action. Take the screw driver and find the compatible screw and then place in the upper left corner. Maybe reading over twice to ensure understood and then grabbing one thing at time reciting over the directions (though watching someone can also be difficult if the movements are not clear). Another good example is Waze. When Waze says turn left in five hundred meters for many its an estimate, is that this block or the next block but on the virtual map one sees oh it’s the second block. Different learning styles are preferred for different scenarios. Music may be auditory but showing someone where to place their fingers on the guitar may be far simpler than telling them how to do it. Some people may intuit four hundred feet to be the second block others do not. The same can be said of reading and visualisation. The supremacy of reading over visualisation is a presumed preference, an obvious fact. Reading is the better model because it has more text than pictures. Pictures are inferior unless they are in a motion picture on a screen. Graphic novels simplify the narration on the screen by providing a text and image to read from.
Many people believe themselves to be visual learners but degrade visual storytelling. Given their enjoyment of television it is hard to believe that this is genuine. The issue at hand is their lack of exposure to graphic novels. Reading a novel without images to watching a program without text. The graphic novel combines the two in a strange symbiotic relationship. It is irregular thus a foreign error. A book is supposed to be filled with text. Books that have pictures are child’s play. Maturity means less pictures and more text. Yet why is this the case? Apparent maturity requires lucid imagination, a quality more accessible to children. The child needs the picture either because it makes the book worthwhile or it aids the child in understanding the text. Children’s books is a modern phenomenon heralded by enlightenment ideals as most books directed for children were for educational purposes not pleasure. A few books were published in the seventieth century most notably Comenius’ Orbis as the first picture book. Aesop’s Fables were gradually translated for children. From an educational perspective pictures are important but not for adults. It is expensive and writers are writers not drawers. Thus you have a Harry Potter novel and a Harry Potter movie. There is a certain level of habituation to the market as well as maturity for the reader to grasp the author’s intent.
Some novels add some illustrations. Yet their prominence is usually in black and white in the corner of a page. Illustrated fiction of the eighteenth century seems to be the precursor for comics. Robinson Crusoe had illustrations that even Dickens liked more than the text. Dickens published The Pickwick Papers with illustrations. The photomechanical techniques were cheap so they were regularly used in serial novella published in monthly issues. Thomas Hardy and George Eliot even published their worked in illustrated magazines. Ulysses and Old Man and the Sea were both originally published illustrated but but subsequent publishers removed them. The decline followed increased illustration cost and film adaptations but also the growing reliance on pictures over the text. For this reason James rejected their use in his fiction and Hardy gradually removed them from his books. If text composition was second to illustration then the prose would gradually decay. Much of the CGI preoccupation has dulled the beautiful prose. Preferring the spectacle of visual effects over the narration of the story. Graphic novels may be the heir to the illustrated fiction though graphic novels use the visual to tell the story not to extend the prose. Graphic novels invert illustration fiction. The visual is the primary source of artistic expression and storytelling while for illustrated fiction, the prose was batman and image was robin.
There seems to be a hint of illustration in some fantasy novella. Despite the expense the author may feel it necessary given the irregularity of his imagination. Much fiction though imaginative is based in the real world. The author creates a fake character with a a fake mission but the character follows the rules of the world. The author and reader are connected by a shared reality. The author doesn’t need images because the reader understands the situation. The prose describes the character and his station and then the reader playing by the conducive rules imagines the intended framework. A fantasy novel is an entirely foreign creation. The rules do not apply since the creatures and world created are different than the reader’s understanding. The author must take great pains to elaborate his description. Using mythical creatures helps intuit their appearance given the oral knowledge of elves and dwarfs but that doesn’t mean the reader understands. Science fiction falls into a similar category. The prose must be precise. It is in this vein that film adaptations are underwhelming since the imaginative conclusion of the reader differs from the director’s deduction. That being said, there is a unique prose hypnosis that engulfs the reader into an imaginative world. The whole point of the fantasy and science fiction is to tap into the imaginative complex. Proactive reading only furthers the joy of mental visualisation. It is youthful ecstasy to ponder the fiction in its greatest difference.
While the consensus is that people ought to read prose there may be a shift on the rise. Just as cartoons have made it back into the mainstream for adults. BoJack and Final Space eschewing the classic animated comedy genre are generating a new class of acton and drama to be focused on for adults. There is a market for it. Adults need to get over their dogmas. Illustrations aren’t an issue and nor are graphic novels. Film has overtaken the role of the graphic novel but its compromising middle of image and text of graphic and prose may be more enlightening. The graphic novel requires reader engagement. Only the reader can turn the page and read through the prose. It is more passive than the novel and less mental energy but it is still a proactive assault on the brain. It is smooth sailing for those who enjoy the amusing illustration plot. There will always be a market for prose and especially the science fiction genre could remain a thorough neurosis adventure. Yet the graphic novel or manga provide an alternative outlet to combine both learning habits. A way of growing through proactive engagement. A potential way to wean off television and dangerous consequences.
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