North London Reading Group

Which is odd. Because the best graphic novels often contain a darn sight more depth than what’s stacked on the first table through the door at Waterstone’s. 12 Years a Slave producer John Ridley has summed it up nicely, saying:

“There are still some people out there who believe comic books are nothing more than, well, comic books. But the true cognoscenti know graphic novels are – at their best – an amazing blend of art literature and the theater of the mind.”

So why is this amazing blend so scorned by those who should know better?

Perhaps it’s because it was somehow drummed into us while growing up that books with pictures are childish. Forgetting, perhaps, Charles Dickens, who penned some of the greatest novels in the English language, all accompanied by illustrations that are an intrinsic part of the overall Dickens experience. Or The Hobbit, in which Tolkien’s sketch of Bilbo sucking on his pipe inside the round door of Bag End lingers longer in the memory than the actual story.

Maybe it’s because we think graphic novels are for geeks. Which isn’t right, because it’s such a varied genre. Anybody who has ever read Maus – an account of the Holocaust where Jews are drawn as mice and Nazis as cats – knows that this simple metaphor belies one of the most affecting books ever written about humanity’s nadir. Not exactly the domain of the geek.

OK, so there are plenty of graphic novels featuring superheroes, but isn’t every Hollywood film these days? The very same people who would turn their noses up at Frank Miller’s seminal graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns would elbow their way to the front row to watch the Christian Bale snoozefest Batman Begins with a rancid hot dog and bucket of Coke.

Or it could even have something to do with a misplaced belief that illustrations spoil the imagination. Instead, great graphic novels fire the imagination. Take Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, a novel entirely without words. For the first few beautiful sepia pages, it seems we’re in Eastern Europe watching a man leave his family to seek work in another land – until we spot a tentacle shaped shadow over a doorway. We never find out what casts the shadow – is it a monster? Is it a symbol for war or famine? As the book gets gradually stranger, the mind fires on all cylinders.

So, here’s a dare. If you’ve never tried a graphic novel – perhaps you’ve caught yourself wondering why the person next to you on the tube is reading a ‘comic’ – challenge yourself to one of the novels mentioned above. All make accessible and absorbing entry points to a genre that can make regular novels seem almost one dimensional. Or, better still, pop along to our next Graphic Novel Reading Group meeting.

There is a joke that goes, “I’ve just won a lifetime’s supply of Marmite. One jar.” Nobody ever buys just one graphic novel.