Seeing More (Part One): Words and Images

Growing up, my cousin Brian was Officially Cool. He is four and a half years older than me and he lived in the city. He had great stuff and a sophisticated, wisecracking sense of humor. So, of course, I idolized him. Not completely – I had zero interest in sports, so his collection of 20,000 baseball cards meant nothing to me – but in most other ways, Brian was The Man.

His other major collecting passion was comic books. I remember his prized possession was Fantastic Four #88. No Superman or Batman for this guy – they were too established for their books to hold any value. X-men, X-factor, FF, Spidey, Doctor Strange – these were his ouvre. Every time I came over, he gave me a refresher course in handling the books: turn the pages gently, try and touch only the edges, and never, EVER let the corners get bent. Each comic was reinforced by cardboard in its plastic sleeve, and I’d never get through more than four before he got too agitated and made me put them away.

The stories were great, if a bit heavy-handed. All about Good Vs. Evil, the neverending burden of misunderstanding that comes with a secret identity, the death-defying adventure, the certainty that (no matter how dark the scene before the words “to be continued”) Good, in the person of Our Hero(es), would triumph in the end.

I have to admit, I occasionally fantasized about Brian “outgrowing” comics, or tragically perishing in a bizarre softball accident and leaving his entire collection to me. I’d take good care of them, really I would. Nasty, I know, but hey – I was eleven.

Even at that age, though, I preferred “real” books. I liked the pictures in my head better than the ones someone else had drawn. The worlds in my mind were so much bigger and brighter than a twelve-panel page and my characters moved in three dimensions. They breathed and lived in the space between the author and me.

In the past few months, though, I’ve been spending more and more time in what are now termed “graphic novels.” The vast majority of them are still overgrown comic books complete with superheroes and epic tone, they just have more room for complexity in the story. The ones I’ve been seeking out, the ones that fascinate me, are different – distinctly uncomicbooky (Look, ma! A whole new word!). In fact, most of them are rendered in stark black and white.

Persepolis is the story of a girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It chronicles her social and spiritual uncertainty in the midst of that upheaval. I picked up Maus: A Survivor's Tale because it was billed as the Holocaust with the Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, but it goes so much deeper. It's about families, the way we shape each other, the aftermath of suffering on relationships, experiences, and decisions. It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken tells of the artist's quest for an obscure cartoonist, but it spoke to me of dreams and passions and duties and tensions and contentment.

These are stories without easy answers, stories that have no end other than a certain sense of grace and perhaps a taste of greater understanding. Stories that feel less like spandex and artifice and more like real life. They require fewer words because they rely on images to carry the emotional undertone of events. Art becomes a sort of shorthand for human experience in unpredictable ways. The realities illuminated are sad and funny and rich and beautiful, and I hope to get to more soon. They give me another way to see.

Check them out if you have the time.