JC

This is similar to how Horror and Science Fiction films are mostly ignored by the Academy during Oscar time so they decided to create their own award ceremonies.

Just as Lord of the Rings can win a Saturn award and an Oscar, American Born Chinese can win an NBA and and Eisner if it were merited as such.

Graphic novels have at least three layers, the story, the art, and the combination of both, and fans of graphic novels appreciate them in that regard. (I’ll probably be taken to task for that, but so be it). The art in a graphic novel can convey a lot of information that the author of a prose novel also does, but the prose author has to do it with words but doing so without interrupting the flow of the story. Judging one genre against the other is very difficult and I don’t envy the judges jobs on this.

I’m married to an author who writes within a sub-genre that also gets short shrifted when it’s up against other genre novels in a contest. Some judges actually refuse to judge that particular sub-genre, leaving a Zero to be averaged in. So you see there’s plenty of genre prejudice to go around.

He goes from a particularly ill-informed critique of a book he’s never read to an utter dismissal of comics as an art form, saying that comics can never rise to the level of a novel. Which, I’ve got to say, is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

What if prose books were suddenly winning Eisner, Harvey, Ignatz Awards?

I mean, I understand folks wanting more mainstream recognizition and book awards certainaly do just that. Their industry is bigger than ours. And I can even understand that there is already a tradition of graphic novels winning those awards.

But if the shoe were on the other foot, I can see some complaining about how prose novels already have their own award ceremonies, why do they need to be considered for ours? There are probably a number of excellent books that could have won those awards and use the exposure, but they lose out to something that’s not in the same medium.

My copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has, well, not all words. There are pictures too. And almost every page has a number.

I agree he has a right to his opinion. But the fact he hasn’t even read the book boggles my mind. And Gaiman is right. The list is a mile long, and then some, in dozens if not hundreds of categories, where someone, or something shouldn’t have consideration for some award in some era. It’s called progress.

But we’ll always have the Archie Bunkers in this world. Those still holding on, and last to catch up. I’d expect as much from most Op-Eds…. but coming for WIRED magazine takes the bloom off this particular rose. So much for progressive thought. I see the box WIRED wants illustrated literature to fit in, and I don’t like it.

I mean, look, if I were a painter and an award for painting went to a dancer, it would annoy me.

but don’t say that one art is inherently better or worse. People forget at one time that “real literature” was theater and novels were tawdry little gathering places for romantic stories and other pulpy stuff. Of course, there were diamonds in that rough, too, just like comics, but it took a while for them to get accepted.

The irony, here, is that it’s largely a technology story. Funny that a tech geek doesn’t get this (who really cares what the people at WIRED say about art, anyway).

Novels were new because printing was new, of course. As all new artforms, it took a while for them to be accepted as equal to their older peers (in this case, theater) in the world of art. Now novels are accepted, and pure writers denigrate comics.

Comics are growing in popularity in part because tastes are changing but also because technology is making it more and more easy to make and deliver them now, just like technology made it easier to deliver long, printed stories in the early days of novels.

So this prat is saying he’s familiar with autobiography, as a genre, and an illustrated comic autobiography cannot possibly compare with an all text example. There is a word for close minded people like that, a polite one, bigot almost fits the bill.

The award is called a national book award, most dictionaries define book as a collection of printed work bound along one side. There is no definition stating what type of printed matter makes it a book.

The stick up this guy’s backside is starting to cause me to have a migraine. Just wait until someone starts on about the Post Literate Society.