It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an abstract idea that went way over my head! That’s how I feel with some of the comics that I have been reading lately. There is so much going on in these small books. I have read books with hundreds of pages, and understood what I was reading, but these books that sometimes only have a handful of words on a page boggle my mind.
Comics such as Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan (author), Cliff Chiang (artist) and Matt Wilson (artist). This comic contains tons of symbolism, complex ideas, and themes. It is too much for me. I enjoy complexity, I do not enjoy finishing a book and going “what just happened?”
I found this comic way beyond me, but some of my friends really enjoyed it. I can see how they would enjoy it. I got something different from the comic than they did from it. A comic I really enjoyed reading was East of West, and most people I talked to did not understand what happened in the comic, and did not enjoy it.
This theme of not enjoying the same kind of comics as others interested me. I am picky about what I read and I do not always take others’ book recommendations. Comics has made me even more picky. I don’t like what my friends like, so I choose to not read what they do. Even the kind of art that I prefer narrows what I will read, because the pictures matter.
The conversations I have with my friends about books get heated about serious topics such as race and classicism. I never would have thought that comics would almost lead to blows between friends (I’m being a bit dramatic).
There are comic books for me, and there are comic books for, apparently everyone else. Who knew books mainly made up of pictures would be so complicated.
Wait! It’s Superman!
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