People tend to find it odd that I enjoy comics. I often hear, “But you’re so smart,” or, “But real books are so much better.” Honestly, I’m sick of it. Comics can do just about anything Prose can do because you can write wonderful prose in a comic book and put it against a plain white or black background and have it mean something specifically powerful just like you can in prose but with comics you have something else up your sleeve.

Every story telling medium has its benefits and weaknesses and no single medium is the absolute best for any given story. I would go so far as to say that assuming a story is better than another because of its medium is just flat out bad.

Okay, so, Marvel’s new Pride And Prejudice comic is terrible and we all know that it was a lame attempt at attracting women to the medium with out taking women seriously, but it could have been something wonderful. Adaptations tend to be weak sauce though because the person doing the adapting isn’t using all of their creative muscles. Transfering Watchmen, easily the most technically well written graphic novel ever, into straight prose would be absolutely dreadful just like transfering a song, even a song with wonderful story telling, into a comic is a bad idea. Don’t believe me? Check out the Insane Clown Posse’s comic Hall Of Illusions. I love the Insane Clown Posse’s music and Hall Of Illusions is a classic track but it fell so flat in comic form because it was a lazy rendition.

I once wrote a short prose story based on my favorite ICP song, Amy’s In The Attic, and I thought it was fantastic but my friends all felt that while it was cleverly written and the plot moves well in my story, I had taken an idea from another source and my normal creative style had taken a dive.

Lets not even get started on novels to movies. Those adaptations usually suck so bad it makes people cry.

There are exceptions, of course, but those exceptions usually prove to use their creativity far past the original art forms. The reason the Watchmen film was terrible was because Zack Snyder didn’t show Watchmen fans anything they hadn’t seen before. The film looked stunning and the story was rich but it didn’t achieve on the one front that it needed to to be relevant. It didn’t give us insight to the Watchmen world. The Dark Knight, did. Ironman, did. The Spider-Man films, did.

But back to my original point, each medium animated film, live film, animated tv, live tv, music, video games, comics, and prose have their own strengths and weaknesses. Often times the strength and weakness is the same, depending on how it is being used.

What are some of the strengths and weaknesses that comic books have?

Specific Subtleties

One thing that comic books or graphic novels can do that prose can not do is point out very subtle things with out making them obvious to readers. Prose has a habit of sounding very concrete. If you say that a person furrowed their brow in anger, it becomes that. In comics, you can have a character perform something that looks similar and confuse the reader enough to where the truth of what was happening is revealed later.

Confusion Over How Things Look

One of my favorite comics, The Sandman: Game Of You, features a woman who paints things on her face. In one scene she paints lines that criss cross over her face in thin black mascara. In the following panels she attends a funeral and it appears that everybody has the same design painted on their face, someone mocks her for her face paint, and one of the other women appear to life the design off their faces. The other women were wearing veils, obviously, but they looked identical.

Specific Point Of View

In Prose, the writer must do his or her best to create a view in your mind that follows the adventures and people around easily. In comics you can control exactly what the viewers see and don’t see. You control where the focus is drawn to, the colors being used (unless its a black and white comic) and how much detail is put into the image. You can pick a cartoony style of art and make something funny or pick a really photorealistic style and make it sad with out changing a single word.

Specific Character Looks

I’m currently reading a book by Dakota Cassady and I picture one of the characters as being a black woman I dated for a while. Her personality, mannerisms, language all relate so well to the woman in my mind that I can’t help but see her as a black woman with a shaved head even though the cover shows very clearly that the character is white.

The Silent Panel

If you say that a character says nothing, words still enter the readers mind but if you show a picture of someone sitting there with out saying anything when they clearly aught to be, you are left knowing that they don’t talk with out having the narrator say so. This can create a lot of emotion and can really set up the rhythm of a scene.

Information Over Load

A person can read a comic far faster than they can read a prose book and this is because of how much information is conveyed in each panel. There is even a remarkable book that tells a story with out words, The Arrival by Shaun Tan, is moving and powerful and a must read by every one and it uses the information over load very well by often making the reader understand the confusion of the character.

Comics also can control the tempo a lot better than prose can because the pictures are moments and can convey a lot of information in each second that often goes unnoticed. Don’t believe me? Look at Watchmen and look at how much subtext exists in each and ever panel.

These are, of course, just some of my ideas on what makes comics a strong medium and can also hinder the medium.