The Comics Question

A couple of years ago I was visiting my brother in Toronto and I ended up sort of randomly at the Doug Wright Awards ceremony, which is part of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, which my bro is a part of every year. Actually, when I think about it like that, I guess it wasn't really all that random. At any rate, I was at the Doug Wright Awards, and it was sort of an odd night. Stuart McLean was there, and Don McKellar, and the person in front of me turned around and it was my History professor, who as it turns out is married to a man who knows my brother, so that my brother in Toronto ended up knowing my History prof from Regina (small world), and one of the awards was being presented by Bob Rae (I still can't figure that out - Bob Rae?). Bob Rae was not actually present at the ceremony, though, because he was wherever they were presenting the Governor General's Awards. As a result, he presented the award via some sort of video. Now, this was controversial for a couple of reasons, and it brings me to the actual purpose of this post. First of all, comics have been fighting to be taken seriously as a literary form for practically forever, and Bob Rae was asked to present an award at TCAF and couldn't, because he was at the GGs. Sure, the GGs are important, of course they are. But possibly the real kicker here is that the award he was asked to present at TCAF was for a book called Skim, by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki. This book was also nominated for a GG, but guess what? Only Mariko, the writer, was nominated for the GG. Jillian, the illustrator, was not. And Bob Rae was at the GGs, not TCAF.

Okay. Let's talk about last year's CBC Canada Reads competition. Here's how it works: books are recommended by the public and these recommendations are voted on by the public until there is a final 10. Then, five judges each choose a book from that top ten that they will defend in the competition, which leaves us with a final 5. The final 5 are voted off - by the judges - one by one, until there is a winner. Jeff Lemire's three-part graphic novel, Essex County, made it to the final 10 books according to public response, and was subsequently chosen by Sara Quin (of the band Tegan and Sara) as the book she felt was most important among those on the list. Essex County was then immediately eliminated by the other judges, who did not agree with the public's opinion that the book held literary merit. Now, certainly, there are those members of the public who didn't think Lemire's story was all that awesome - nothing is universally loved (not even the tomato). I think the important thing here is the main reason given for Essex County's elimination: Ami McKay, author of  The Birth House, had a very distinct problem with the number of words in the book, and described the book as "a shortcut." This was a criticism that was shared by the other judges. 

A shortcut? Really? 

I'm about to admit to my own bias. I know that in persuasive writing, this is a thing that you should never do, but I'm going to do it, because I feel really passionately about this subject. 

As a person with a family member who writes and illustrates graphic novels, I can tell you that a lack of words in no way constitutes a shortcut. A lack of words is not even a lack of anything at all, it is merely an absence, an absence that is filled with illustration, illustration that contributes significantly to narrative. This is why people who make comics were outraged by the snub in the GGs. And after the hours and hours that I have spent over the course of my life watching my brother toil at his drawing table, at our coffee table, on his bedroom floor, hours spent with a fountain pen tip and a bottle of ink, dipping and inking, dipping and inking, making permanent after the hours already spent pencilling the same images, I can tell you that to call a graphic novel a shortcut is nothing short of ignorant and insulting. It is merely preposterous.

It's important for us to realise, as storytellers, that there are different ways to tell a story. We should already know this; many of us probably make a choice, on a regular basis, about how we want to express the ideas floating around in our heads: "Do I want to write this as a poem? Is it a short story? Is it something longer? Does it feel like the story would be aided by visuals, and should I think about writing this as a screenplay, or a standard play?" I think about those things all the time. The idea that the GGs are a writing award and not an art award has been presented to me, and my stance remains firmly on the side of the artist; in a graphic novel, the two really can't be separated, and to acknowledge Skim as literary but only partly is an oversight that underestimates the importance of the illustration in that work and suggests that the artist played no part in the telling of that story - this is simply untrue. Comics have their own awards, and I realise that. But if a book is going to be nominated for a literary award, it's the entire book that should be nominated, and not just part of it. Essex County was eliminated from the Canada Reads competition based on form, not content.

Interested? Here's an article where a panel discusses the problem with graphic novels in literary competitions: http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/02/17/culture-club-essex-county’s-exile/ , and here's a link to a letter that was written by Seth and Chester Brown, two of the foremost graphic novelists in the world, to the GG awards: http://comics212.net/2008/11/12/skim-graphic-novels-and-the-governor-generals-literary-awards/.

I think there needs to be more scholarship generated around the graphic novel so that people will start to take it seriously. I think I might need to be the one to do it. I'm not saying that this is a sentiment that will be universally accepted, ever, but seriously, Spiegelman's Maus? Shigeru Mizuki's Onward Towards our Noble Deaths? Everything ever written by Seth? Not literary? Come on.