Comics and Graphic Novels

Comics and graphic novels have existed for decades, but only since the invention of the Internet and thus easier accessibility, have they gained incredible popularity all over the world. Many people do not notice the difference between these two mediums, and thus consider graphic novels as a typical children’s comic books with no educational value and less mature form of literature. However, graphic novels are different from comics and even other forms of literature. Moreover, such novels are a creative type of storytelling that combines text and pictures, which often involve very mature topics and deal with some complicated matters.

‘Maus’ by Art Spiegelman presents the life story of a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust during the Second World War. The whole novel is presented as an interview. The whole plot describes the life of the author’ s father before he got to the camp, the hard experiences during his stay there, and from the liberation.

The novel is a kind of biography presented as a graphic novel.

The author of the novel shows the cruelty of those times in a rather crude and brutal way, and does not try to soften the reality of those times in any way and does not avoid showing brutality, violence or racism. Another interesting aspect is the representation of different nations through animals, thus Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs. This novel is telling a sorrowful and severe story and requires high sensitivity and maturity of the reader.

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The novel is a very moving work, which, through the combination of pictures and text, has a powerful impact on the imagination and is very creative. ‘Persepolis’ by Marjane Satrapi is an autobiographical graphic novel about the author Marjane Satrapi, who grew up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution in the 1980s. The novel presents a child’s perception of Iran-Iraq war and religious extremism at a difficult time for the Iranian people.

The novel shows the adult world seen by a ten-year-old girl and the revolution in the way the author remembered it as a child. The novel shows death, brutality, oppression during the revolution. The novel requires great maturity as well as empathy from the reader. The novel is drawn with a characteristic line, which increases the reception of the text. Moreover, the combination of text and image makes it possible for the author to convey more, and the reception itself could be even more attractive than in the case of the traditional novel. Both examples demonstrate that graphic novels are not intended for children, for example, because of their subject matter, so it would be inappropriate to say that they are childish. Moreover, these works require maturity, knowledge of history, and empathy from their readers.

Using a combination of image and texture results in a creative presentation of a particular story, therefore it is possible to convey it differently, stimulate the imagination and, above all, attract the attention of people who are not interested in the classic novel. Moreover, graphic novels require the authors to be a master in the art of writing and drawing. Indeed, graphic novels are a creative way of telling a story that combines picture and text, and also very often explores difficult topics that require the reader’s maturity. ‘Maus’ by Art Spiegelman and ‘Persepolis’ by Marjane Satrapi, illustrate the nature of graphic novels well. Both works discuss the themes of war, violence, and inequality, and through this form of presentation of history, one can get the impression that they convey more. To quote American director Darren Aronofsky, ‘Comic books and graphic novels are a great medium. It’s incredibly underused”.