Comic, representative of B literature? Fighting the myth.

Is it possible to lump all comics together and say that they are B-grade literature, not worth much attention? You can, but that would be as unfair as treating all crime fiction as simple entertainment, when there are some excellent novels among them that require meticulous knowledge and months of preparation on the part of their creators.

Unfair generalization

It is not without reason that the crime novel is used as a comparison here - it is the novel that was once pushed to the margins of culture, even abandoned for a time in Poland, and today turns out to be the best anthropological memoir of recent years. That's why we are making progress, and the hurtful and labeling concept of B-grade literature is being replaced more and more by popular literature. This, in turn, finds its way to academic chairs in the form of the aforementioned detective stories, for example, and becomes the subject of serious literary studies.

Will comics suffer a similar fate? Perhaps not to such an extent, since there are far fewer Polish comic books than detective novels, which took the domestic reading market by storm in the late 1970s and early 1980s and even deserve their own name, the militia novel. However, there is a good chance that the diversity of comic books, their styles, themes, and climates will make for very interesting research material.

Quality Comics

Among comic books or graphic novels, it is not difficult to find true literary gems, such as Art Spiegelman's Maus, whose graphic simplicity perfectly complements the striking theme of the whole story. This is not the only comic book that has been unanimously recognized as a literary work: Alan Moore's "Watchmen" or Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis" are also on the comic podium, proving that the comic book allows the author to express himself even on the most complex subjects. Contrary to appearances, comics do not simplify the world or limit the creator. On the contrary, the combination of narrative and image opens the door to the use of a variety of techniques, such as reminiscence or narrative within narrative.

A work of visual art

Of course, there are some comics that you will forget after reading them. But there are also those that stay in your mind, either because of the unusual, profound story or the artistic quality of the illustrations. In comics, the graphic side has a very responsible job to do, because it conveys, along with the written word, emotion, atmosphere, and often content, but in a way that is unorthodox and impossible for traditional literature. There are times when comics are visual masterpieces, and their specific layout with multiple panels creates amazing circumstances for artists to demonstrate their artistry.

An important cultural element

Despite the fact that they take place in different realities or times, comic books are always a diary of the present. They are evidence of a certain way of thinking about the world in the future, of visualizing it in a certain form. Academics are slowly recognizing the multiple meanings in comics, as they do in hip-hop music, for example, and are beginning to treat these works of popular literature as an artistic medium and a vehicle for literary content.