What sort of PoD might create a situation where "graphic novels" (ie: fictional works in which the story is primarily conveyed by illustrations supplemented with a relatively brief text for narrative clarity and dialog) became the standard western form of written fiction instead of the text-based novel?
Comic Books as Literature
- Thread starter zoomar
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I don't think it would be possible, at least not without changing the way humans 'tick'. The ability to convey asent information is the point to language, first of all. Then you would need some technological POD where creating text is more expensive than creating images - so no print and no blackletter writing allowed.
ON the outside I could see it if the writing system never went alphabetic and therefore reading remained a relatively rare ability requiring much study to move beyond the basics, even so - they have novels in China, don't they?
ON the outside I could see it if the writing system never went alphabetic and therefore reading remained a relatively rare ability requiring much study to move beyond the basics, even so - they have novels in China, don't they?
carlton_bach said:
Here is the definition of comics from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic reponse in the viewer."
This definition is broad enough to fit everything from the original superman strips to cave paintings; the book uses a 14th century tapestry and and an ancient Egyptian scene painting--no heiroglyphs--to demonstrate the point. Personally, I thought this definition was stretching it, until I realized that modern comics and pre-modern "comics" work the exact same way. Which, I guess, McCloud was trying to get across...
From that perspective, images, along side oral transmission, have been the primary means of conveying information. Even through the 19th century, illustrations and woodcuts were commonly included with printed text. In fact, text with out pictures make the historical exception, rather than the rule.
If you're going to start with a PoD in recognizably Western history, you might go with something in the Classical world, or you might try for an artistic movement around the time printing starts becoming popular in the West. Or, going East, you could have Chinese printing take off and merged with high Asian aesthetics.