Books

I have an inherent bias...

I taught myself to read at the age of two. My parents and grandparents had thought I was just memorizing books until one day I asked where Vietnam was.

"Where did you hear about that?"

"It's on the newspaper, see?"

‼️⁉️‼️⁉️⁉️⁉️‼️

At two, there's not a lot of reading material available, but comic books were $0.25 and considered disposable, so why not? Trip to the grocery store, throw the kid some comics.

From then on, my life has been surrounded by books. Now, some 54 years later... I have a "proper" library of "proper" books.

But since mom never threw out the comics, I have what I refer to as "the East Wing" of the library for comics and graphic novels:

So when it comes to reading, or perhaps you want to say capital "R" Reading, are comics not reading? What makes it NOT reading?

Is it merely because it's not just engaging the language centers of the brain, but also the visual cortex? Well that's an interesting subject, because scientists ran a study on sighted people who were blindfolded and then taught braille and found that reading braille also engages the visual cortex.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8606771/

Is reading braille not "Reading"? 🤔

If you sit down and read a play that was intended to be performed on stage by actors with props and music, is that not reading? 🤔

Is it because, as a medium, comics aren't considered serious art? Well, I'll grant you it's just over 100 years since the invention of the form and it's still evolving, but we've come a long way from what were once just collections of newspaper comic strips to something much more.

How it started (July 26, 1908):

How it's going (1980-1991):

I know, I know, unfair throwing down Maus since it won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

Maybe it's because "Superhero fiction" or what's affectionately referred to as "Capes and Tights Books" are considered to be less serious?

There are any number of serious superhero books, the obvious ones people ALWAYS talk about, your "Dark Knight Returns", your "Watchmen", your "Sandman".

But there are any number of lesser known serious books such as Kurt Busiek's Astro City which is just a phenomenal read. No spoilers, go check it out.

Or also Starman by James Robinson, which deals with complex family relationdhips and personal legacy. Again, no spoilers, go read it.

Then there's Zot! by Scott McCloud. Not "Zot", "Zot!"

Zot! started in color and then as the publisher started running out of money, went on hiatus and came back as a black and white book dealing with a much more serious tone. The B&W issues are all collected and every page is a delight, but more to the point...

After Zot! completed, McCloud would go on to write and illustrate what is considered to be a defining work on the art of comics called "Understanding Comics":

All of this going a very long way to say... yes, I believe comics are reading. Further, I believe what you are doing right now is reading. 😉

Does it evoke an emotion? Did you learn something new? Was knowledge transmitted from the past into the present and now into the future?

Is that not the whole point?

My first instinct was to say no, but as I thought about it more it became more of a gray area. Comics use art and illustration to convey scene, and the only "reading" per se is dialogue and sometimes narration. Most novels lean more on description and imagination. But certain books/plays like Hamlet or The Iliad are also mostly dialogue/narration yet we consider those to be "reading", essentially just without the art.

It is reading. The medium is not the issue. Some people read romance novels or adventure novels, are they better than romance or adventure comics?

This is like going back to when books were considered bad because theatre was the main way to tell stories.

The discussion to have is about the topics these comic books are covering. Are they varied enough? Can everything be made into a comic?

But if having some illustrations is helping anyone to read, they should go for it.

I agree with jordanlund, and consider "comics" as reading. Just read what you enjoy, but nothing wrong with trying out different stuff and see if anything catches your fancy. For instance, I recently learned about autobiographical graphic novels, basically, they are memoirs or auto biographies, but in comic format. Persepolis and Maus are couple of famous examples.

I've never used Tiktok or YT shorts. I did go down the Instagram rabbit hole for a while but I deleted my account when I realized I was spending hours on it. I've gone back to reading and writing as much as possible. It was kinda hard to re-learn my reading habit. That said, I do read several webcomics and have tons of comic books in .cbz and .cbr format that I've been reading through. I would consider it reading but on the lighter side since I don't have to use my brain to figure out what the characters and scenes look like.

I'm going to answer with "无". In this context meaning that I think the question…

My question do you consider them as reading?

…is badly formulated and needs to be recast.

My suggestion for recasting your question is: "Do I care what other people consider to be reading?"

Do you derive pleasure from reading them? Does this pleasure change if other people don't consider it reading? I submit the answers to these questions should be "yes" (otherwise why do it?) and "no" (because other people's opinions are relevant largely to their own life only) respectively.

Enjoy what you read, however and whenever you find time to. Life has few enough opportunities for joy these days. Don't look for more reasons to have less of it.

Manga and graphic novels are definitely 'easier' for me to read than traditional novels. There are fewer words, the action is more prominent, and the art kind of directs your focus for you. It's sort of in-between a book and a movie/show. That said, I do think it's a valid form of 'reading'. Reading doesn't have to be a book that is at least X amount of words.

no i think reading is reading a book, as in interpreting words written on a page and creating a world in your head where what you've read exists

but the other stuff is fucking great too

I wouldn't consider it reading other than in the strictest technical sense.