REAL literature...!?!

Mattias Hallin Mattias.Hallin at jurenh.lu.se
Thu Nov 25 13:47:46 CET 1993


About what Bjorn-Are and Fredrik wrote on the subject of comics/literature
comparisons - yeah! I most certainly agree with Fredrik!

This is, to my mind, one of the basic misconceptions when dealing with comics:
to compare them to literature, or to any other medium for that part. Comics, or
rather, to use Will Eisner's terminology, sequential art, is an artform as
separate from literature as is film or pictorial art. There are of course
similarities as well, in that any medium can be used for practically any
content, and that the same thing might be equally eloquently said in any
medium, at least in theory.

In practice, sequential art (I'll fortwith call it "comics" for short) has only
been exploited as an artistic medium to a fraction of it's capacities, because
of various social and/or cultural phenomenae and stigmae that has been attached
to it, and of course this gives us all the more reason to be grateful that
people like Don Rosa and Los Bros. Hernandez and Neil Gaiman and many more are
chosing comics as their medium par preferance, as their artistic outlet.

But I also think that we, who see and appreciate this, should consciously
refrain from reverting to riding the hobby-horse of the 1960's and 70's fandom,
the one that goes "oh, if we only could get comics accepted as REAL literature"
because comics ain't that, nor will they ever be!

Also, Bjorn-Are: Yes, your lines are beautiful now - thank you very much! It
makes your postings much easier to read, and even if I disagree with what you
seemed to say about comics and literature, your points of view are always very
interesting, so...

Quack, quack, goes

Mattias



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