The Importance of Comics: Part III - Language and Understanding
- Luke Evans
- Dec 23, 2020
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 15, 2021
In Part I and II, I talked about personal opinions regarding the value of comics for me specifically throughout my life's story. This time, we'll look at some of the aspects that apply to comics more broadly - What is their appeal?
- Pic: Litreator.com
In the last two sections, I talked about why comics appeal to me, specifically in relation to what they taught me about handling grief. Here I wanted to discuss the broader appeal to a wider community. I had a colleague and a friend question me about this once. He couldn’t understand the appeal, but more than that, he couldn’t understand how people took comics seriously or claimed to learn from them. He said some people talk about them like they believed that the stories had so much to teach them, that it was almost like a religion and he couldn’t understand it. I would submit that he hasn’t read the right comics in the right contexts.
But it’s a good question:
What can comics contribute in more broad terms? What meaning can we get from them?
Language and Understanding
When we are looking at the use of words and language, I want to include the words of The Man himself - Stan Lee:
“I don't know anybody who reads comics who doesn't read books, because if you develop a facility at reading, you'll read anything…. there is nothing better than a comic book to help students learn to read... what happens is, children learn to equate pleasure with reading, when they read comics. The more comics they read, the more they develop a facility at reading, and the more you become a reader, the more certain it is that you will go on to read other things. A person who's a good reader isn't going to limit himself to comics. So comics are really a hell of a good educational tool… I didn't limit the vocabulary to young people. I tried to use a college-level or above vocabulary. If I wanted to use a word like cataclysmic, or misanthropic, or whatever, I would use it. And I'd figure… the kid would either go do a dictionary and look it up – and that's not the worst thing in the world – or he'd get it by osmosis, by the use in the sentence.”
- Stan Lee: The Appeal of Comic Books (37/42)
-Pic: Imgur
Stan said that when he wrote, he didn’t "dumb down" the language at all. He believed that kids would read the words and if they didn’t know them, they’d work out their meaning via the usage OR they’d have to go and pick up a dictionary – and in that case, there were worse things that could happen.
I agree.
Comics are a window into stories and stories lead to books. Next, a kid might pick up a book with prose that's still full of pictures. Then, one with just a couple of illustrations and then just a book with only the words.
That’s what I did.
And then, I started writing my own stories.
Here is another quote about learning from comics:
(Helpful Note: Piotr Rasputin = the X-Men’s Colossus)
“Spasibo." It means thank you. I really know only a few words of the Russian language, but what little I do know I learned about twenty years ago. I was taught by a man named Piotr Rasputin. I didn’t know him very well, and never asked if he was related to the Czar’s infamous “Mad Monk,” but I do remember that he had the curious ability to turn his flesh into a sort of impervious living steel. Very cool, really. One of my earliest geology lessons came when I was about ten years old. Like my smattering of Russian, it wasn’t a full, formal lesson. But I did learn some interesting and scientifically sound facts, including that because limestone in the earth is partially water-soluble it often creates caves and sinkholes. I overheard a young duck without pants discussing this. I don’t recall if it was Huey, Dewey, or Louie, but, in any event, they were searching a cave for hidden treasure on behalf of their avaricious great uncle, Scrooge McDuck. (In the same comic I also learned that Scots are tight with a penny, but perhaps that was a stereotype I shouldn’t have picked up.) I learned scads of (mostly accurate) factoids from my youthful reading, following the adventures and exploits of Encyclopedia Brown, Tintin, Tom Swift, Doc Savage (and his band of scientists including a chemist and an electrical engineer), and, of course, comic-book superheroes.”
- Quote Ref: Skeptical Inquirer Volume 31.4, July / August 2007
My daughter learned from comics like this. The X-Men taught her words in different languages (she used to tell people she spoke four languages… we had to say “No… you know WORDS in four languages!”). She learned about aspects of history borrowed for use in the books, including a working knowledge of mythology and legends. She learned things about writing, telling stories, and performance – narration, story creation, pacing, story arcs, breaking the fourth wall, poetry. All sorts of cool stuff from the stories that she read. And then she too started writing.
- Pic: Litreator.com
These are general things relating to all stories and it doesn't matter where you find them. The point here is that comics can be one of those important places where kids and adults can access and learn about language and literature. When a kid doesn't like to read, comics might get them in. And when they're in, they will learn.
Comics can teach people of all ages to read and develop a love for reading and story-telling. There was a great interview on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope years ago with Nigerian poet Chris Abani where they talked about a story that Denton called, “John James and the Power of Spider-Man”. Chris Abani spent time in prison in Nigeria as a political prisoner in times of unrest. His first book, published when he was 16 years old, was a fictional thriller called “Masters of the Board” and led to his arrest when they claimed he was masterminding a coup against the government. Two years after the book’s release a general who had been a patron of the arts and who had supported Chris was arrested in regard to a coup attempt. When the government went through the General’s papers they found the book and they claimed that the failed coup attempt was a direct copy of the plot of the book, which Chris holds was not the case. He went to prison three times, including 6 months in solitary confinement.
Whilst in the prison, he met a 14-year-old boy named John James. John was held on death row as a ransom when his father fled the country. John was the only one that the guards allowed to have reading material with him in prison, which Chris attributed to the guards seeing their own sons in the boy’s cheerful disposition. So, John had three comics with him while he was incarcerated – one Green Lantern, one Silver Surfer, and one Spider-Man – and he would teach the inmates how to read with them. Chris said he would be sitting in prison and hear things like, “Take that, Spidey!” and “My spidey-senses are tingling!” from the older, hardened inmates, some of whom Chris said were quite vicious men. Chris said the following:
“There was something really amazing about literature. That this is the thing about stories… whatever its original intent is… it’s almost like a virus, and, you know, John James was essentially tortured to death… That’s how some of us ended up in solitary, because… we kind of rioted after that… So, there are these ways in which this sort of remarkable young kid continues even in his absence to… kind of reverberate.”
- Quote: From ABC's Enough Rope with Andrew Denton, Episode 28 of the 2008 Season
He was talking about the power of the written word to bring light to such a horrible place. They were just comics, but John used them to teach men how to read when no one else in the outside world had. John James was just another prisoner, but he influenced others and taught them something wonderful, in this case through the medium of the comics. They had value far beyond their simple stories to those men.
It's something to think about.
-Pic: The Opinion Arcade, image from the Spider-Man game
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Previous posts in this series:
NOTE: The pictures used here have been sourced from different internet sites, always linked to under the picture. In the case of comic panels, the original issue numbers and creators are listed, as well as the company that owns them. All rights remain with the original creators and have been used here for entertainment and educational purposes only.
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