Can Graphic Novels ever be as deep and meaningful as real books,

>>9365057
Theoretically, yes. Its just words and pictures. Its going to take a real artistic movement or two to pull out if the capeshit rut that plagues the comics industry, but there are writers and artists that can pull it off. Jean Giraud, Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman, and the like were establishing some great works before the big 2 blew up and damn near shut down the medium. Comics are constantly pushing boundaries these days, but nobody really reads indie or alternative or experimental comics. But that's the real patrician shit. I don't consider comics to be literature but they certainly have a literary component and many display legitimate artistic merit.
As far as newer works, my favorites are
>The Wrenchies - Dalrymple
>New Construction - Alden
>Low - Remender
>Oyasami Pun Pun - Asano
>Tekkonkinkreet - Matsumoto
>A bunch of obscure indie shit by people I don't remember, published by Koyama press, Studygroup Comics, 2D Cloud, etc.
comics could be the new patrician artform if they can escape the Marvel/DC circus

>>9365057
I've always thought so, just that most American comics are capeshit, so people tend to prefer the "legitimacy" of writing prose when they're going to write some shit.

I still really like Asterios Polyp though.

>>9365057
>tfw got away with writing my final essay about this book in 8th grade
Ahahaha funny as fuck. I barely remember anything from that time because I was all fucked up on SSRIs and overly elated but still, it was a humorous exercise in realizing just how much I can get away with.

>>9365057
Assuming the focus isn't on images, why would they make novels less meaningful?

Why is it so hard to grasp that /co belongs in /co?

Just because it has words, it doesn't mean it's literature. I'll throw you a bone and say that comics can achieve the things you mentioned, but so can movies, but we don't discuss them here.

>>9365057
Read Understanding Comics and stop calling them 'graphic novels'.

Why do you not consider comics to be "literature"? How do you define "literature"?

All comic books are (at least potentially) literature told through visuals. Most American comics just happen to be dumb books for kids or retarded adults, for a variety of reasons.

The reason this kind of conversation fits better on this board than /co/ is because /co/ is full of really
R E A L L Y
stupid people who have the emotional maturity of a child and probably always will.

>>9365057
that one can

many others cannot

that will be $5 for the profundity

>>9365266
Comics are a visual medium.

As with any young medium, it'll take the time to get up from the dust.

But American comics are really in the shit right now. Their industry is monopolized by superheroes and they had no visionary lead the way for them. Manga had Tezuka, which is why you have the range of genres you see today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Osamu_Tezuka_manga

Just look at his output and the amount of Literature he adapted - he had his own version of Manga C&P, Shakespeare, the biography of Buddha, Faust, and Tales of Hoffman

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>>9365314
>Their industry is monopolized by superheroes and they had no visionary lead the way for them.
That's only partly true. There were some great, ambitious writers/publishers back in the day like Will Eisner and Bill Gaines, before the CCA basically reduced the industry to a kid's genre. EC Comics in particular had some great stuff, diverse and well-made, and only Mad Magazine survived.

>>9365057
Uzumaki is the best horror /lit/ ive ever read. Walking Dead early on is quite good too.

>>9365250
>we don't talk about cinema here
lol you are new.
we have more productive and patrician film discussions than /tv/, not to mention art threads, music threads, philosophy threads, and of course comics threads.
Benefits of having shitty mods

>>9365373
I wonder how many people reading comics today even know of great innovators like Herriman or McCay - but at the very least Astro Boy has entered into the popular consciousness.

>>9365460
Maybe not the names, but I think they'd recognize their characters. Little Nemo had somewhat of a revival around twenty years ago.

>>9365413
Besides the occasional "what's the most /lit show/film?" thread, I have not seen many. Rightly so, as they should be kept to a minimum, since, afterall, they are not. Fucking. Lit.

>>9365403
Honestly, Uzumaki dragged on. It was interesting at first, in a cronenberg body horror type way, but it seemed like Junji Ito didn't know where to take it from there. Gyo is a much better comic than Uzumaki imo.

>>9365312
>books can only be read with your eyes
>implying books aren't a visual medium

>>9365314
I disagree that comics are monopolized by superheroes. Most I've seen receive any sort of sustained interest actively avoid the same old tropes. Black Science, Providence, Saga, Ody-C... There's an argument to be made about separation into issues diluting quality, I think, but none of these are even remotely like the superhero comics in the past. There are the continuations of the classic superhero comics still running, but I hardly know anyone that actually reads them, it's largely smaller, more original works.

>>9365661
>what is an audiobook
>what is braille

how retarded can you be

>Graphic Novels

Comic books. "The funnies."

>>9365057
Comics shouldn't try and be books with more pictures and less words, they should cater to their strengths, and expecting there to be a graphic novel equivalent of Shakespeare or for some high art to come from comics is dumb
A 10/10, well-regarded, deep and meaningful comic is still just a comic.
I'd take Hellboy over 50 thousand wanna be Watchmens any day

>>9365226
>tfw i once wrote an essay on the plot of Star Fox 64 just to see if i could do it
>got an A

>>9365126
but watchmen was pretty good

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>>9365057
>Can Graphic Novels ever be as deep and meaningful as real books,
Yes
>or are they forever limited due to the focus on imagery?
It's more like literature is limited by their lack of imagery
>Does /lit/ have any preferred Graphic Novels?
Watchmen and Sandman are both pretty neat desu

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>>9365057
No reason why not. The market is saturated with shit, but there's loads of artistically valuable stuff if you look beyond the top sellers. Also it's a different medium! The focus on visuals is an aspect vital to comics, it doesn't make the medium worse, it opens different avenues of expression to literature.

My favourites would be

Building Stories - Chris Ware
Dropsie Avenue - Will Eisner
Ice Haven - Daniel Clowes
Palestine - Joe Sacco
The Name of the Game - Will Eisner
The Tale of One Bad Rat - Bryan Talbot
Vertigo - Lynd Ward
Violent Cases - Neil Gaiman
Victor Moscoso's work in Zap

>>9367274
>It's more like literature is limited by their lack of imagery
This is so dumb. Literature isn't limited by their lack of imagery just like it isn't limited by their lack of sound or anything else.
Different media achieve different things.

>>9367383
But it is! And that limitation can be turned into a strength.

And I agree with you, different media achieve different things precisely because of their different strengths and weaknesses.

>>9365715
I don't get why you say comics doesn't have the POTENTIAL to EVENTUALLY become high art just like videogames (yeah, I know). Are saying the media is the message? Explain.