Slashdot Mirror
NYT Magazine: Are Comics The New Mainstream Novels?
securitas writes "The New York Times Magazine cover story this week is a (typically) long feature about the rise of comic books and graphic novels into mainstream culture, with writer Charles McGrath (former editor of the Book Review) stating: 'Comic books are what novels used to be -- an accessible, vernacular form with mass appeal ... perfectly suited to our dumbed-down culture and collective attention deficit.' McGrath cites the mid-1980s birth of a movement that began and fizzled with Maus (Art Spiegelman), Love & Rockets (Hernandez Bros.) Watchmen (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller). The current renaissance in graphic novels include non-fiction Palestine (Sacco), non-fiction Persepolis (Satrapi) which has sold 450,000 copies, Ghost World (Clowes), American Splendor (Pekar), Road to Perdition (Collins) and Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, which won the 2001 Guardian Prize for best first book and has sold 100,000 in hardcover. McGrath interviews Marjane Satrapi, Julie Doucet, Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Alan Moore, among others. The article also has a multimedia interactive feature with many of the graphic novelists (registration required) in the magazine article."
...for all your dumbed down graphic-novel reading needs.
Seriously, if you've never read it, it doesn't get more bloody or offensive than that... my favorite graphic novel by far.
Not only in Japan, but also in Western Europe - most notably in Belgium, France and the Netherlands - have comics been mainstream. Everybody in These countries knows Tintin and most take it serious. Other serious yet popular comics are the comic-version of voyage au bout de la nuit (journey to the end of the night) - the novel by Louis Ferdinand Celine and made into a comic by Tardi. Also in Holland have major novels been turned into comics.