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I think you have all gone crazy.
How are comics not books? What weird definition of books do you have? Printed on pages, between covers - sounds like a book to me. Children's books are full of pictures; yet somehow, still books. Design books are full of pictures; again, oh my god, still books. Do you equally object to the phrase 'graphic novel'? 'Comic book'?
Virtually all kinds of books have their own awards, from philosophy to science fiction to cook books. So do comics. Yet all of these - well, maybe not cook books - are also contenders for more general book awards. This isn't a way of pissing on their generic specificity, its a way of recognising their merits and promoting forms of literature people may have been dismissing or unaware of.
quote:comics is a medium unto itself, and that fact should be acknowledged.
Sure, and it is. Eisner Awards, hell, even Wizard awards. But to most of the public, such awards are a joke; nobody who's not already a comics geek is going to be impressed if you hand them a comic insisting, 'It's really good, it won an Eisner!' 'Oh, it won a comic award. Great, I'll start on it right after I finish the new Don Delillo. Here, this issue of Soapy Tit Wank won the "best double penetration shot" category at this year's Hornies.'
Now, if comics' specific merits (and awards) are going to be taken at all seriously, the public - and in particular, the kind of educated public book awards are aimed at - need to accept the possibility that comics can be as good as 'regular' literature. Awards like this seem likely to advance this process; they're certainly not going to hinder it. If that can be established, then comics-specific awards would have some cred, because they wouldn't be awards for some sub-literary funny-book ghetto, they'd be the awards recognising excellence in a particular literary subgenre.
I fear that I disagree with large chunks of what I've just written, but the idea that comics aren't a kind of books strikes me as deeply nutty. |
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