Week 11: Comics As Contemporary Literature

   The graphic novel, or comic, is in my opinion a definite form of literature. It's just more directly visual of course than it's word-only counterpart. Honestly by now graphic novels and books are really pretty similar, it's just the stories are told through different forms. For this week I took a look at Daniel Clowes's Ghost World. I remember watching the movie when I was younger but finding out it was a comic surprised me a bit. It makes it interesting to see it jump from one medium to another like that.

   Ghost World was an interesting read and it really flowed like any other story you might read on paperback. The only real difference of course is that you have a lot of drawn out panels to look at and take in along with the character's dialogue to understand the story. I can see how the graphic novel is becoming such an appealing form of literature by this point. Ghost World feels a lot like any other drama I've read but the visual aspect of it's comic form gives it so much more than a simple word-based book would have. Following the ventures of Enid and Rebecca in the novel was much easier and I felt more connected to the characters thanks to the visual help of the graphic novel. I feel that this is also one other aspect graphic novels have over books and why they can be successful. Through the use of visuals the reader can form an easier connection to what they're reading by seeing similar imagery or anything of interest.