The Importance Of Graphic Literature

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Recommended: Maus and persepolis

I have always been a fan of literature; this is not an unusual interest. So when I took this class I did not know if I would be able to love or hold graphic novels to the same esteem as I had for more mainstream literary pieces. When I was going through these stories and researching I found that they were literary. I really did not have a right trying to separate graphic novels and their merit or validity from the classic literature I typically find myself reading. And so by assessing comic books or graphic novels by literary standards, or by my own, I found that there was a lot to be discussed and certainly enough fodder to analyze. This is why I wanted to look into autobiographical and biographical graphic novels. I knew that there was more than enough to discuss.
I started out only looking into autobiographical works. Such writings would include Maus and Persepolis, which were discussed in class. So I wanted to stray away from those already previously covered. This is where I found Good Riddance by Cynthia Copeland. This is a typical story of a suburban wife with a hard-working husband who cheats on her, leading to their subsequent divorce. While this does not sound like a new topic for current discussion, it is approached from a new angle. When Copeland created her divorce through images she was able to include her own imagination of the situation. You are not only receiving her perspective, you are literally looking through her eyes. She gives you detailed images of things she only imagined. Like game boards that were used as an illustrated metaphor, or political cartoon to help detail her life and her memoir.
From this I also discovered SuperZelda, an Italian graphic novel about the life of Zelda Fitzgerald. This is a sto...

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...nest storyteller, the same cannot be said of Judith Forest. Judith Forest is the French creator of both 1h25 and Momon, two autobiographical graphic novels. The first book 1h25 was very well received and became a major litereary success in France. Forest went on to give interviews on the radio, on television, for magazines, but then it stopped. It was later revealed that Judith Forest had never existed and the woman that had been interviewed was nothing more than an actress. After all this the people who released the book wanted to get the message acrossed. They believed that art required a bit of mystery, and maybe even a bit of deception. But, going back to the idea of being honest in biographical and autobiographical work this then clearly contradicts that. Is the connection to the work lost because of its blatant deception? Is it worth less, or simply rebranded?

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