Read 'Til You Drop

I personally read the words and only take in the graphics as background thing, but I am an intensely not-visual person. I almost always go back and re-read and pay more attention to the pictures, but for me, reading intially, it's about the words. Once in a while people do whole comics with no or very very very little words at all, and I ... well, the first time I almost never get the story, because I look at the pictures too fast and am waiting for words to tell me what's happening. I don't care for those very much. :)

And I'm *writing* a comic book. (Actually, if you want to talk about *that* more, email me at cemurphyauthor@gmail.com and I will be glad to chatter your ear off! Or fingers, or something. :))

My husband pays equal attention to the images and the words, he says.

tendency to read the little write-ups on the wall before looking at the giant, reason-I'm-there, graphic material of paintings or drawings or photographs.

I do that too, actually. Glance at the picture, maybe, but read any info there is about it before taking a good look at it. Almost every time. So I think there is in fact hope for you, if you *want* to read graphic novels. :)

Edited at 2008-03-07 11:56 am (UTC)

Mindy,

I am with you absolutely on this -- I cannot for the life of me get into the graphic novel reading mode. I did try several months ago -- I adore Buffy so I had to get Season 8 which is in graphic novel form only, and pretty much dealing with it was very, very difficult for me. I never quite got used to it, even though I finished the whole thing, for the sake of a favorite character and story. But, what torture! :-)

I tend to first read the captions, then look at the picture they illustrate -- otherwise I go absolutely insane.

I have no idea how people can maintain this kind of reading/picture viewing experience interruptus for extended periods of time.

Now, if this had been no words, only pictures, I'd enjoy that kind of experience very much, I love looking at neat pictures.

But both -- my brain HURTS! *grin*

Just to add, I do the same thing in art museums -- drive myself bonkers reading the little captions on pictures FIRST before focusing on the image itself. And I am an artist! Have no idea why I have to compartmentalize my reading and viewing experiences. They just don't blend in my mental world.

Edited at 2008-03-07 12:01 pm (UTC)

Well, honestly, graphic novels involve me taking the whole thing in at once. I guess I look at the panel to get the context, read, and then continue to look. A lot of people breeze right through comics and graphic novels, but it takes me forever.

the text and the pictures are one holographic entity for me - like watching a movie and hearing the dialogue at the same time as seeing the visuals.

But then I never read _anything_ "line by line, word by word" - I take in text at one gulp, a paragraph at a time.

I should say that this is when the panel is "text and graphics together" - when it's "graphic panel, with text in box below" I glance at the image, read the text, then go back to detailed study of the image.


Edited at 2008-03-07 04:31 pm (UTC)

This one's a hard one to answer for me, because I've been reading comic books (and by extension graphic novels) for about thirty-five years now, but I'll give it a try.

The real trick with reading a graphic novel, at least for me, comes from the page's composition. Do be aware that the specifics here are going to apply to Western graphic novels not Manga due to different page layout conventions arising from their right to left reading order.

The trick is to work panel by panel. Look at the top left corner, that's your first panel. Then for image vs. text you treat the panel as almost a sub-page. Look at the panel left to right, top to bottom. If the text (caption or speech) is in the upper left, it precedes the picture, if lower right it follows the picture. There can be variations, but that's the basics and you'll quickly internalize it with practice.

I once had a friend who was incapable of reading comic books as an adult because he'd never read comics as a kid. He didn't understand in what order the panels should be read, or how to interpret what happened between panels, or any of the other narrative rules that are never quite spelled out. I've often wondering whether ingesting the rules of comics is similar in a way to learning a new language, in that they're both best done young.

If you're trying to figure out how all of this is meant to work, I recommend tracking down Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics.

I'm not good with them either. I tend to glance at the picture, read the words, then look more at the picture.

Based on the description in one of the Sandman publications (in which Neil explains the process and gives his "script" for one part), I miss a lot.

It's a lot like watching subtitled films. If you can do that, you should be able to read sequential art. I went from reading comics to reading manga, which you generally read from the "back" of the book to the front and from right to left -- a major challenge at first which I now find completely seamless.

I think I read the words first and then look at the pictures, but often there are no words. The use of silence and space by the artist can be as important dialogue and description.

You might try something wordless like Shaun Tan's The Arrival to get a sense of how story is conveyed in sequential art before diving into the deep end.

Also, for Sandman, I started with Death: The High Cost of Living -- a self-contained, slim (but not in any way slight) story about a major supporting character in Sandman which worked as an onramp to the more challenging larger series for me.

I would also point out that many children's picture books are, in effect, graphic novels (Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes shares many of the same stylistic approaches but generally only has one "frame" per page).

Someone mentioned Scott McCloud's book and I've heard it is very helpful

I'm with you. I fear they are not for me. However, I can't wait to attempt Diary of a Wimpy Kid with my Little Man. :)

The answer depends in part on the ratio of text to illustration, and the quality of words versus art. Sometimes (e.g., when Neil Gaiman collaborates with Dave McKean, or when Frank Miller works with Bill Sienkiewicz) it's a synergistic delight to pay close attention to everything.

Gaiman's Sandman (which for me overall has a higher text value than art quality - except for the McKean covers) is as good a place as any for you to start. You might want to read his World Fantasy award winning issue, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," as a first foray.

In all honesty, it's a matter of what's more comfortable for you to read. I'm a pretty avid fan of graphic novels. I usually read and glance, or I look at the picture. It helps set up the scene that I'm reading. I think it's totally possible for you to pick up a graphic novel and read it. Plenty of hope for you :D

I've been reading The Sandman, actually... between that and Nausicaa, I've figured out the way I read graphic novels.

Miyazaki's Nausicaa, Whedon's Fray, and The Sandman are as much writing as pictures - and that's the focus of it for me. I occasionally ogle the images to see how the illustrator set them together, but primarily I just read and absorb the pictures. :D

That's different from action comics or pure image without a narration. I watch enough animated fighting that I can't see the appeal in that at all. :)

If you want to meet at Starbucks sometime, I can lend you some of my comics. I'll have to think a bit about what's most appropriate for a first-time reader.

I read the text first because I consider myself a reader. For this reason I have no biases against quality of art. But then, I also read a lot of webcomics.

If you wanted "practice" I recommend a great comic that is already self-published as graphic novels (but you can go online for free): The Gods of Arr-Kelaan. I could recommend tons more but this one has a special place in my heart (and the rest fall in the comic-strip spectrum, mostly).

In a way, it depends on how the work is presented. Some have word balloons and some have separate narrative boxes and some use both. I mostly read comics which are just shorter format graphic novels. Comics collected into a larger edition can be considered graphic novels. I think of reading them similar to watching a movie. Pictures and words together.

So, I look at the page and the pictures are there. I can't help but see them. Then I narrow in on the text, whichever appears first in the panel or page. Sometimes, that's narration, sometimes that's dialogue. But in my brain, it feels simultaneous. I've been reading comics for 47 years now, and I've long ago trained my brain to take it all in and since I always "hear" what I read in my mind, it really does feel to me like the characters are speaking.

Edited to add: Oh, and I always look at the art in museums first, then check the title and painter on the little write-ups. I don't even read them if they're more than a line or two. I am a visually oriented person, though I do love to read unillustrated books. But comics were my first love when it comes to reading because of all the pretty pictures.

Edited at 2008-03-08 02:39 am (UTC)

I've been reading comics since I learned to read at all, so "how-to" is not something I have any analytical handle on, but since you already like Gaiman, let me strongly second the recommendation for "Death: The High Cost of Living" as a great starter -- that and his Sandman stuff is imo his best work, better than his novels (tho I *loved* American Gods). I actually started the Sandman series near the end with what is now the graphic novel "The Kindly Ones", and still think of that & "D: THCoL" as his peak, but TKO might be a bit darker than your usual tastes?

Hmm, most of the things I'd most highly recommend are sort of dark . . .

Recently in a bookstore, I picked up and read something inspired by the true story of some lions that escaped a zoo in Iraq during the invasion. Incredibly well done but heartbreaking.

Allan Moore's "American Gothic" run on Swamp Thing from the 80's is one of the best things I've ever read, and from the same time period Frank Miller's "Elektra: Assassin" (and please don't hold the abominable movie against it)(as someone else noted, the artwork is amazing) would be some of my other suggestions from the superhero realm.

Less superheroey, Bone was great, can't remember who did it, & maybe Love & Rockets would suit you better than all of the above? Those were black & white, dunno if they're still in print anywhere.

I sometimes pick graphic novels based on the writer, and sometimes on the artist (P. Craig Russell is one of my favorites).

If you like dark, you would like SANDMAN; note the books are collections of individual issues of the comic, not single graphic novels. HELLBLAZER is also very dark--the bound collections of issues aren't always sequential, but each form a single story or go to a theme.

LOVE AND ROCKETS is great. The original ELFQUEST is a lot of fun, and available collected.

I would wait on WATCHMEN because it has a lot more meaning when you have a background in superhero comics.