Discourse Chronicle

CT: Gentlemen, how do you think the comic arts will fare against the convergence of different forms of media with the Internet?

MTI: The graphic novel is the next important art form. It’s not necessarily going to replace fiction, drama and poetry. They will exist alongside one another and graphic novels will flourish as it already is. We already have almost classic works that everybody agrees are worthwhile products of the movement. That’s going to persist for a long time.

The thing the graphic novel depends on is the way that it is printed on paper and the layout on the page. If you’ve ever tried to read a textbook on the computer, you know it’s not the same experience at all. I don’t see how you could take a two-page layout of a graphic novel, for example, put it up on a computer screen and respond to it in the same way when it’s in print in front of you. I don’t think that the computer text is going to replace the printed book at all. We’ve got mega bookstores like Barnes & Noble selling books like crazy online. Someone must be buying them and there must be something in that tangible, physical reading experience that makes it different for people. I know it does for me.

Whether the newspaper is going to survive is another question. I’m not so sanguine about that. If anything goes under because of the computer, I think it will be the newspaper. I think comic strips will find another place to exist and the graphic novel will be around for a long time to come.

[M. Thomas Inge (MTI) interviewed as a member of a panel featuring professors discussing comic books and censorship. Inge is a well-respected professor and recognized as the grandfather of comic scholarship. I always enjoy talking with him at National PCA and I look forward to seeing him at MLA in December. Subscription required. BK]

category: Comics, Literacy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics