QUILLBLOG

Time to get off the stool, comics fans!

Though graphic novels have attained a strong level of acceptance among traditional prose readers, comic stores still don’t seem to be making an effort to embrace those readers. As Douglas Wolk argues in an essay on Salon, “comics culture” is still just as closed-off and unwelcoming to the casual reader as it’s ever been, and, as he sees it, it’s time for things to change.

Over the last half century, comics culture has developed as an insular, self-feeding, self-loathing, self-defeating fly-trap. A lot of the people who hit their local comics store every Wednesday think of comics readers as some kind of secret, embattled fellowship. (That’s why most comics stores are deeply unfriendly places: everything about them says, “You mean you don’t know?” In some of them, even new pamphlets and books are sealed in plastic before they go out on the shelves; if you don’t walk into the store knowing what you want, you’re not going to find out.) It’s a poisonous mind-set for any number of reasons, the biggest one being that to enjoy a comic book, you either have to be a Comics Person or be able to explain why you’re not really a Comics Person.

As Wolk sees it, comics fans continue to act insular because they’re still a little insecure about the aesthetic worth of the medium.

A lot of comics readers are unhealthily attached to the idea that everyone else thinks what they do is kind of trashy and disreputable, and that they have to prove their favorite leisure activity worthy of respect — to show the world that they were right all along. [...] It’s probably time to let go of that strain of earnest defensiveness. The snobbery of the rest of American culture toward comics is, if not entirely gone, dissipating quickly.

Comments are closed.