Art and Literature

Can comic books be literature? It's a question that's been around for a while and, to be honest, I don't think anyone has ever come up with a proper answer. This is because, for the most part, people have been concentrating on the question "Are comic books literature?" rather than "Can they BE literature?". And the answer is that most comics, like most books, aren't literature. They can be good, but that doesn't make them literature. So what I'm going to do, over my next couple of blogs, is take some specific examples, some comic books and graphic novels, and argue that in individual cases comic books can be literature. I'll be arguing that books like "The Killing Joke", "Arkham Asylum, a Serious House on Serious Earth", "Watchmen" and "Batman, the Long Halloween" can be seen as literature if we stop looking at the issue as a polarising one where all comics either are or aren't literature. (I'm aware that what I've listed are DC publications, but as I write I find it harder to find Marvel comics that stand alone and which I am familiar enough with to argue, although I do not doubt that there are ones. Similarly I'm not familiar enough with 2000AD publications, Neil Gaiman's Sandman series or any other works which may be of literary calibre)

On the subject of whether they can be art, the answer is "Of course they can be", but the art world is more accepting of Comics as a part of their sphere of influence. Think about it, original comic artwork can be worth a lot of money, when was the last time an original comic script was considered of real value, or that comics were appreciated as art for the depth of the writing? That's the balance I want to redress here; to demonstrate that the writing of a comic book can be far greater than that of many books and can stand up as well as the artwork