28 The Graphic Novel and Literature

Dr. Sayantan Dasgupta

Introduction: Most of us have read comicbooks in our childhood. Perhaps, many of us continue to enjoy reading them even as adults. Many of us grew up smuggling comicbooks to school and ending up in detention when the class teacher discovered that we were carrying comicbooks. This may have happened to you as were your teachers in school unhappy with you reading comicbooks? This is because comicbooks were traditionally not looked at with too much respect—they were even considered by many to corrupt the youth and distract them from serious, more profitable reading.

But, the times—they are a changin’! The idea of ‘literature’ has undergone a remarkable expansion in recent decades. The English word ‘literature’ derives from the Latin word ‘littera’ and is connected with the letter or, in particular, the written word. The word has been used for many different kinds of texts—one uses the word ‘literature’ for texts that are considered ‘literary’ in the traditional sense of the word, but one also uses the same word today for documents related to knowledge of a more utilitarian nature. One can think here, for instance, of the ‘literature’ that accompanies mechanical and electronic gadgets, for instance; so, instruction manuals can also the referents for the signifier ‘literature’ today.

However, for the purposes of academia, the humanities have traditionally used the word ‘literature’ in a generally narrow sense, where it has tended to refer specifically to a comparatively small, but elite, body of texts, again generally enjoying a printed mode of existence. A consensus developed whereby a body of literary texts were identified with the label ‘literature’ when it came to the pedagogical context. This body of works, while its composition did change across time and space, remained essentially the same in terms of the qualities that defined its constituents—this was the process of canon formation, whereby a set of works were elevated in status to a hierarchically superior position and were seen to be privileged over others. The canon thus formed represented the public, official face of ‘literature’ and comprised what came to be identified as ‘masterpieces’ or ‘classics’—these works, almost always affiliated to the realm of printed ‘word’ texts, were seen to have proved their hierarchically superior status by having successfully withstood the ravages of time. That is why these works were generally works of some antiquity—very recent literary works  found it very hard to wrest a position within this space.

This, then, was the traditional notion of ‘literature’ as embodied in our academies of learning in the humanities. However, with the passage of time, this notion also got diluted and developed its contours differently—the idea of ‘literature’ expanded beyond the space signified by the lettered and the printed. The second half of the 20th century was particularly fecund as far as this transformation was concerned. The emergence of Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham in the 1960s was just one development that was symptomatic of these larger changes in the way we began to look at the humanities. Scholars began to identify a crisis in the humanities and attempted to hunt for measures that would help academics combat this lacuna. Cultural Studies was but one such approach; by going beyond the ‘classic’, the printed text, and reaching out into society, specifically working-class society, this approach posited an alternative to the ivory-tower study of esoteric, privileged works that often had little relevance to the lives and realities of the student or teacher.

Yet this was only part of the larger picture. Cultural Studies may be seen to have emerged as an alternative to literary studies, but we soon see literature studies redefining the way they understood the word ‘literature’. The previously sacrosanct definitions in terms of the lettered and the printed were cast aside, as indeed was the understanding that what could be studied as ‘literature’ in the classroom must be restricted to old works that had proved their worth by continuing to command admiration from connoisseurs over the centuries. More recent and even contemporary works made an entry into the study of literature as gradually did works that enjoyed a mode of existence apart from the lettered and the printed. Today, literary studies includes within its ken at various institutions all across our planet, songs, visual texts, theatre, sociological treatises and various other such elements.

This transformation in the way ‘literature’ is understood within our pedagogical practices has also affected the status of the comicbook. Today, comicbooks and graphic novels are no longer frowned upon in the way they were once. The comicbook is, in fact, today considered a viable educational tool in many places. Even in schools, teachers sometimes end up referring to comicbooks and using them as secondary resources. Not just that, the idea of the canon has been radically restructured, and departments of Comparative Literature and/or Single Literature have incorporated the serious, critical study of the comicbook within their purview; the comicbook thus has ended up today being studied side by side with other books that have traditionally been considered classics or masterpieces; in some places, they have even gone to the extent of replacing some of the latter. Wonder what your class teacher  would say if you went to her and told her this today?

The Graphic Novel: We have already used both the terms ‘comicbook’ and ‘graphic novel’. Many of us are better acquainted with the term ‘comicbook’ and perhaps not quite so much with the term ‘graphic novel’. Is there a difference between comicbooks and graphic novels?

Some feel ‘graphic novel’ is just a fancy name for the old-fashioned ‘comicbook’. It is a label that throws up associations of one of the most popular genres of world literature, and thereby stakes a claim to a modicum of respectability.

However, there is another point of view—one that allows for some crucial differences that distinguish the graphic novel from the comicbook. There are others who point out, for instance, that a graphic novel is generally of greater length than a comicbook is, and that a comicbook often spills over into multiple issues, while a graphic novel is generally self- sufficient and complete by itself. They would also point out that a graphic novel is usually more expensive because, generally, its production values are better. And, finally, the shelf- life of a graphic novel is longer as it is more like a book than a magazine—the comicbook can only remain relevant until the next issue of the title hits the newsstand, whereupon it becomes dated, but this is not so with the graphic novel.

There are various labels you will come across for this medium—comics, graphic novels, graphic narratives, manga (Japanese comics), and sequential art are various names that are used for the picture-story. They all refer to texts that combine two distinct ingredients: words, and pictures. It is the relationship between these two ingredients, and the paramount importance of both that define this medium.

Speech balloons and thought bubbles are usually used to carry the narrative along in these picture-stories. The speech balloons and the thought bubbles take the narrative towards the mimetic mode of representation, while the commentaries at the top of the panels brings in the diagetic element, the other element of representation in ‘literature’. The graphic novel is, therefore, little more and little less than a ‘narrative’, just as the epic, the novel, the short story are all different forms of narratives—it is just different from the others because along with words, it also uses pictures, and both words and pictures and organic to the genre.

The modern comicbook evolved with the popularisation of print culture. However, according to scholars like Christie Marx, the origins of the comicbook can be traced back to thousands of years ago to paintings of hunting expeditions in walls of prehistoric caves. (Christie Marx, Writing for Animation, Comics, and Games). Even the ancient Egyptians created texts using hieroglyphs, texts which were basically picture-stories. Closer home, the traditional patachitra is a common Indian art form that uses pictures in sequence to piece together a narrative—the patachitra is scroll painting popular in Odisha and Bengal. All of these may  be considered close to the comicbook or the graphic novel in nature.

History: One of the watershed events in the history of the picture-story was the publication of a comic strip called The Yellow Kid. Yellow Kid was drawn by Richard Felton Outcault, and published in 1896 in American Humorist, a weekly comic supplement that accompanied the New York Journal.

The popularity of Yellow Kid spurred on other newspapers and periodicals to explore the medium further, and the comic strip gained in popularity. It was when comic strips like these were assembled together and published again, this time in the form of books, the the comicbook was born.

The 1930s were particularly important for the comicbook industry in both France and the USA. In the USA, Detective Comics and Marvel Comics, two of the dominant comicbook publication houses, were formed during this decade. Then, in the late 1930s was born one of the most popular and enduring characters in the realm of the comicbook. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created a new superhero character in the 1930s that took the USA by storm— Superman, alias Clark Kent, alias Kal-El, the survivor from a dead planet called Krypton, millions of light years away from Earth. Superman made his first appearance in Action Comics No. 1 in 1938. The figure of Superman defined US American public culture for decades.

The 1940s, however, were not quite as productive for the comicbook industry. The comicbook came in for extensive public criticism and was held up to be responsible for social evils and violence—many opined that the comicbook culture was fuelling a mindset that promoted crime, vigilantism and violence. As a result, the Comics Code Authority (CCA) came into being to nip the wings of the comicbook. This code placed several prohibitions and limitations on the publishers of comicbooks—they now had to follow its strict guidelines. This meant a curtailment of licence on the part of the comicbook and is taken to have dealt a blow to the popularity and creativity of the comcibook in the USA.

Finally, in the 1960s emerged a culture of ‘underground’ comics, or comics that set out to flout the CCA—this was led by Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix.

Historically, there has been an idea that comicbooks are meant for children. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why the comicbook has not traditionally been taken very seriously by academia. The reason for this is akin to the reason why children’s literarture was not taken up for serious academic and critical discussion for a long time.

However, it is important to note that the idea that the comicbook is for the consumption of children is not quite accurate. While many comicbooks are indeed targeted at children, there are also picture-storybooks drawn/written specifically for mature readers, which deploy mature content.

In any case, the comicbooks/ graphic novels are created by adults; and the ideas, prejudices and beliefs of these adult writers/artists are bound to percolate into the texts they create. That is not to say that writers and artists always consciously try to use the comicbook for propagating political ideologies. However, even a less conscious level, political beliefs do colour even comicbooks that are created primarily for a juvenile readership.

That is why the graphic novel/comicbook is a literary work like any other work and deserves critical attention. On critical analysis, it can throw as much light on social structures, hierarchies, and contemporary politics as can a short story, or a novel, or a poem. One can therefore critically analyse a graphic narrative in much the same way as one would critically read a novel, or a short story, or a poem.

Sequential Art has been generally ignored as a form worthy of critical discussion—this is a common complaint among those who have written/drawn graphic narratives as well as those who have written on them.

“While each of the major integral elements, such as design, drawing, caricature and writing, have separately found academic consideration, this unique combination has received a very minor place (if any) in either the literary or art curriculum”

(Will Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art, 1985)

However, the graphic novel has come in for much greater critical scrutiny since the time Will Eisner wrote his landmark book. It is now studied as an object of enquiry in various institutions across the world.

Nevertheless, one must remember that the graphic novel is a very demanding genre. It deploys a special language consisting of a combination of both words and pictures; therefore, the reader requires special skills and training to analyse it—s/he needs to know how to analyse the text as well as the images, and read them in the light of each other. Training in the art of reading traditional ‘literary’ texts as well as training in reading art is beneficial to potential readers of the graphic narrative. The reader of the graphic novel wishing to study it critically needs to focus on, among others, the following: perspective, symmetry, brush stroke, grammar, plot and syntax, according to Eisner.

One line of comicbooks that have been very influential and popular is the Walt Disney comicbook. Characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck became extremely popular icons all over the world—they became symbols of contemporary US American society and  its values. They were exported to many countries, where they became representatives of US American culture, and were received variously, with delight in some contexts, and with skepticism in others.

A pioneering book to look at in this context is How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic Book (Para leer al Pato Donald in Spanish). The book is written by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart and critically studies the Walt Disney comicbook. It argued that the comicbook had the potential of being used as a means of propagating US American cultural imperialism. By doing so, it highlighted how popular literature and culture could not be summarily dismissed as not being worthy of critical attention. It showed how such texts (comicbooks, graphic novels, etc.) needed to be studied critically and how such studies could help one better understand one’s society and immediate political environment.

How to Read Donald Duck was tied up intimately to the political imperatives of its times.  The book was written when Salvador Allende was in power and was trying to establish socialism in Chile, the South American nation. Salvador Allende’s democratically elected Popular Unity government was nationalising industries and trying to make Chile culturally and economically independent. This did not go down well with the US government and the USA engineered a coup in 1973; this resulted in General Augusto Pinochet taking over power, replacing the democratically elected government with a military dictatorship more friendly to US American business and corporate interests

How to Read Donald Duck is therefore very important for understanding how the graphic novel/ comicbook can be analysed to yield useful insights about literature and culture.

Though academia was reluctant at first to take the graphic novel seriously, this changed over the years, partly because of changes in the way one understood literature and culture, and partly because of the way the graphic novel itself evolved. One of the first graphic novels to command serious academic attention was Maus. Maus was created by Art Spiegeman and was serialised in a magazine called Raw from 1980 to 1991.

Maus is based on Spiegelman’s interviews with his father, Vladek, a Polish Jew, who was a victim of the Nazi brutality and somehow managed to survive the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s parents’ experiences in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II and what happens to them after that work their way into the graphic narrative.

Maus also uses an innovative technique and deploys bestial imagery, depicting the Jews as mice. This is a work that merges the public history of the Holocaust with the personal history of Vladek and Anja, Art’s parents, as well as with the history of his problematic relationship with the former. Based largely on the oral narratives of Art’s father, Maus offers testimony to one of the most troubled historical and political contexts of the modern era.

Art’s technique in Maus seems to have influenced other writers/artists—we note how Malik Sajad, in his controversial graphic novel called Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir, uses the form  of the Kashmiri hangul deer to represent Kashmiri people.

The topic of Maus, the human and historical tragedy it recounts, and the style it uses, compelled academia to sit up and treat the graphic novel with greater seriousness than before. Its publication was an important watershed in the journey that sees the graphic novel being treated as ‘literature’.

Another very important political graphic novel is Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. This graphic novel was written in French and published in four volumes between 2000 and 2003. Satrapi’s graphic novel has again been extremely influential and has given the genre a great degree of respectability as ‘literature’.

Persepolis is an autobiographical narrative and traces the author-narrator’s childhood in Iran during the troubled times of the Islamic Revolution. It also focuses on her life as a student in Vienna, and her return to Iran.

It is a graphic novel that highlights to the world the history, both distant and immediate, of a country so culturally rich, and one that has contributed so much to world civilization. At the same time, it is about the narrator’s fight to carve out a life of dignity and independence as a woman caught up in a repressive society.

Persepolis and Maus belong to a genre that has become very popular in recent years— graphic novels that may be called ‘political graphic novels’ and that focus on contentious historical and political contexts as their primary object of enquiry.

One can mention Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm (2010) in this category—it is a graphic novel that focuses on the Emergency of the 1970s, which led to the democratic tradition being subverted in India. Another example is Joe Saccho’s Palestine, which was published as a book in 2001 and brought together nine issues of the original comicbook—it is a graphic novel that seeks to highlight the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.

Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta, with its focus on a post-nuclear war UK, replete with fascism, concentration camps and creation of a police state, may also be seen to belong to this category.

The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders (2006) is another graphic novel that focuses directly on contemporary political contexts.

Among the US American picture-storybooks, one series that has attained cult status is The Sandman. In mythology, Sandman is the overlord of the dream realm and is responsible for bringing dreams by sprinkling sand over our eyes.

The Sandman presents the adventures of Dream, who is a 10-billion year old member of the Endless group—a group of characters who are personifications of forces such as Destiny, Desire, Delirium, Despair, Destruction and Death. The Sandman weaves a rich tapestry of mythology and fantasy. Some may be reminded here of the Amar Chitra Katha comicbook, which in its own way, tried to foreground Indian mythology through the use of the comicbook medium. But the agenda was very different for the Amar Chitra Katha; Anant Pai created the Amar Chitra Katha series with the avowed objective to helping Indian children fight off the threat of cultural amnesia in a world headed towards globalization.

In recent years, however, mythology and science fiction have come together in the context of the Indian graphic novel—we have seen many such endeavours in the Indian graphic novel industry, which is going through an exciting phase today.

Recent Developments in the Indian Context: Amruta Patil’s graphic novels, Adi Parva: Churning the Ocean (2012), and Sauptik: Blood and Flowers (2016), for instance, take mythology as their starting point. Adi Parva, as the name suggests, focuses on the beginning of the Mahabharata tale. Sauptik, on its part, focuses on Aswaththama, the warrior cursed with untreatable wounds, after the Kurukshetra war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas.

You may also have come across Ramayan 3392 A.D. Ramayana 3392 A.D. is another comic book series that tries to re-inscribe Indian mythology and re-interpret traditional narratives. It re-inscribes the Ramayana in the context of a world ravaged by a nuclear Third World War.

It is written by Shamik Dasgupta, and drawn by Abhishek Singh, and published by Virgin Comics.

There are strong graphic narrative traditions in other Asian countries as well. Japan, for instance, has a long tradition of the manga narratives. You may have heard of Osamu Tezuka, one of the most popular manga novelists from Japan. Osamu Tezuka created this epic 14- volume (in Japanese; the English version is in 8 volumes) series called Buddha. The Buddha series was published from 1972 to 1983. It presented Osamu Tezuka’s interpretation of Buddha’s life and philosophy and his society and times, and is visually striking and thought- provoking.

One of the most exciting ventures of recent times from South Asia in the field of the graphic narrative was This Side, That Side: Restorying Partition. This was a venture that brought together writers and artists from Pakistan, Bagladesh and India, who collaborated to produce the narratives in the book. Curated by Vishwajyoti Ghosh, and published by Yoda Press in 2013, it explores various facets of Partition through the form of the graphic narrative. How exciting it would be to study these graphic narratives side by side short stories and novels on Partition!

Conclusion: Surely, reading graphic narratives like the ones in This Side, That Side against texts that are more easily accepted as ‘literature’ can be an exhilarating and enlightening experience. Similarly, reading Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha comparatively against other more mainstream Buddhist literary texts could produce exciting and insightful perspectives. This just goes to show how literary genres such as the graphic novel need to be studied in the classroom side by side with other more ‘mainstream’ literary works—expanding our notion of ‘literature’ will make our work more exciting, holistic and profitable.