Comics

When I was young, there used to be comic book racks in book stores and even in convenience stores. You’d spin them and they’d whir as they rotated–tempting you to stand there and read them for as long as you wanted.

Comics were fun to read because, in a way, it was kind of like reading a storyboard for a movie. The frames were like the camera angles, and the text were either the dialogue or the narration–depending on how it was used.

Before today’s slick CGI and special effects, comics created that world of CGI and special effects–in our mind, of course. It brought to life a universe where visuals told us much (or more) of the story as the words did.

Comics explored worlds and characters in a way that literature couldn’t. In literature, you had to pour through several pages of words to invest yourself in the story. In comics, the illustration told the action and the story just as soon as you saw it. To hold a comic in your hand, it’s like holding a book of visual art.