My kid loves comics. Is this a bad thing?

My six-year-old son loves comics. I want him to develop a healthy habit of reading, but I worry that comics are a waste of time. What do you think?

Mio Debnam answers: Pictures have been used to tell stories for centuries – cave paintings, tapestries and stained glass windows are a few well known examples. Many parents buy their pre-school offspring picture books by the dozen – and are happy to acknowledge that the pictures help to attract their children’s interest in the book, and also allow young readers to make sense of the words by providing visual clues – so why do graphic novels and (the more simple) comic books get such bad rap?

Perhaps it is because parents are eager for their children to progress from ‘baby books’ – i.e. those with lots of illustrations and few words – to ‘adult books’ or prose novels – which have lots of words and few, if any, illustrations. Or maybe it is because the only experience parents have with comics are the comic strips found in newspapers, which due to the fact that they appear so often and are so short, are considered to have little literary merit – though more about that later.

These days, however, there are many good book-length graphic novels – and the stories they tell can be as complex and multifaceted as any normal prose novel, and can span the genres from adventure stories, tales of cultural awakening, romance, dramas, comedy… as well as the superhero and sci fi stories that have long been popular. But are they as good as prose novels? 

Yes, I believe they are. In some aspects, they can even be better…

For example – because of the fact that they are illustration rich, they can lure reluctant readers into picking them up, and nearly all children enjoy reading them. So, not only do they encourage your kids to read, they can develop their imagination, and last but not least, teach them that reading is fun and a world of adventure or fantasy can lie between two covers! 

But apart from that, they do have literary and educational merit too:

Because graphic novels do not have huge tracts of text, the reader is left to figure out a lot of the story from the specific details (facial expressions etc) in the pictures. Your kids may read a graphic novel quicker than a prose novel, but their minds are mastering some sophisticated skills: e.g. learning to use ‘clues’ in the text and illustrations to figure out what is going on, and to infer what will happen next. The fact that the text is supported by the illustrations can also help ESL or less confident readers tackle vocabulary they are not familiar with, thereby increasing confidence and reading skills.

When teaching creative writing, teachers often tell their students to ‘zoom in’, on specific and often small details, to make the reader feel what the character is feeling, or to use conflict to raise tension, as well as how to keep the readers hooked by pacing and character development.

Kids who are not avid readers often find it difficult to grasp these creative writing goals – and are encouraged to ‘read more’ so that they can see these techniques brought to life. Although the goal is for them to read a variety of reading material, these skills can be learnt by reading a good graphic novel as well as by reading prose novels. The sequential nature of the pictures also graphically demonstrates how to storytelling works – e.g. how to structure and pace a story, what details are important, as well as when to reveal them and why.

Lastly, I have spoken a lot about ‘graphic novels’ which are books, whereas many kids also enjoy the cheaper more frequently released comics – ie things like the Beano, or the newspaper funnies, or superhero comics that come out weekly. Are they a waste of time? Well, although those type of comics do not, and cannot, delve into the craft of storytelling in the same way that a graphic novel does due to the brevity of its form and the frequency at which it is published, many use similar storytelling techniques, so are of some educational worth. Besides, in my opinion, anything that makes a child eagerly read and helps to foster their imagination, sense of humour and ignites their enthusiasm can never be a waste of time!