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Little Fish Comics and Collectibles is located at the Cosner's Corner shopping center in Massaponax.
Mike Porter, owner of Little Fish Comics and Collectibles, believes graphic novels are legitimate literature.
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By MICHAEL ZITZ
Most of the business at comic book stores isn't in comic books anymore.
According to pop culture trend tracker ICv2, graphic novels have begun to outsell comic books. Graphic novels are essentially comic books on steroids, with longer, more complex, darker stories. The term can also include putting together a long story arc initially published in half a dozen regular comic book issues, but purists tend to refer to those as trade paperbacks.
Statistics aren't available yet for 2007, but 330 million graphic novels were sold in North America in 2006--a 12 percent increase. That wasn't bad news for comic book publishers like DC and Marvel. There was an even bigger jump in sales of traditional monthly periodical comic books like "Batman" and "Spider-Man." They were up 15 percent to 310 million in 2006. And comic book publishers like DC are doing quite well with graphic novels. Where they once appealed almost exclusively to teenage boys, they now sell to people of all ages, male and female.
But is this because comic books and graphic novels are getting better or because our culture in general is dumbing down?
Tom De Haven, a Richmond novelist who teaches creative writing and pop culture at Virginia Commonwealth University, says it's the former.
"There's been so much good stuff in the long form over the last 20 years I can do a whole literature course now just with serious comics," he says of graphic novels. "I've gotten myself in trouble [in the academic world] sometimes by saying I think it's going to be one of the most important literatures in years to come."
But he says some critics might consider actually visiting a comic book store before dismissing graphic novels.
De Haven insists it's not a question of the work "being good 'despite being comics.' They're good
because
they're comics."The literary form, he says, "is on its way now. It's not going to be held in the kind of contempt it has been for so long."
De Haven is the author of several novels, including "Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies," which won a 1997 American Book Award.
Because of that book, DC Comics asked him to write a 1930s-era novel about its most iconic character's youth. "It's Superman!" was published in hard cover in 2005 and paperback in 2006, and has won critical acclaim. "It's Superman" is legitimate literature for sure. It deals with genuine ugliness of the time--real-life warts including racist talk--and a young Superman who's conflicted, frightened, feeling far from invulnerable, and is ready to give up and run away.
De Haven himself became a voracious comic book reader at age 8, during the 1950s, and continues his devotion to the medium to this day. Comic books, he says, were "the major factor in how I learned storytelling."
In Spotsylvania County, Mike Porter, the owner of the new Little Fish Comics & Collectibles store at Cosner's Corner, isn't just trying to ring up sales when he insists that graphic novels like "Watchmen," "Kingdom Come" and "V for Vendetta" qualify as legitimate literature.
Porter is a true believer. Way back in 1995, when the Fredericksburg area and a comic book store weren't even on his radar screen, he was a teacher's aide lecturing on Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta" as part of a science-fiction literature course at Guelph University in Ontario, Canada.
He says students and their parents would come to him and ask if there was additional literature they could read to help with the course. You know, Mr. Porter, "real" literature. "Real" books. Not comic books.
No, Porter would say, the best examples of the graphic novel form
are
real literature."It's definitely literature," he says standing in his store surrounded by Batman, Spider-Man and Superman comics and action figures. "It stands up to any distopian literature."
George Orwell's "1984" is an example of distopian literature. Distopian protagonists, such as Winston Smith in "1984" and the character V in "V for Vendetta," challenge negative aspects of their societies, putting themselves at risk in the process.
An argument can be made that anything that gets people--especially young people--to read in today's TV and video game culture is good.
Chris Lewis, a paraeducator at Spotsylvania's Ni River Middle School who started reading comics at age 10, and who says he "dabbles" in writing them himself, believes comic books and graphic novels can be used to teach children to love reading --and literature. He said he began collecting comics with DC Comics' "Death of Superman" series, and that he now reads "more mature stuff" in graphic novel form. He said his own 4-year-old daughter can't read yet, but is already being drawn into comics by "Krypto the Superdog." Because of this, he hopes and believes she will read more as she grows up than she have without the presence of comics in their home.
"Comic books can lead you to science fiction or fantasy" novels, said Cory White, manager at the Big Monkey Comics store at Lee's Hill in Spotsylvania. White himself, a Massaponax High graduate, went in the opposite direction, from reading science fiction novels about post-apocalyptic worlds to Superman comic books.
He considers "Superman: Red Son," a "what if?" alternative reality series of large "prestige format" comic books a brilliant work of science fiction regardless of genre. "Red Son," written by DC Comics' Mark Millar, imagines what would have happened if Superman had grown up in communist Ukraine instead of Kansas.
White believes comic books and graphic novels are just beginning to tap into the potential of feeding off a symbiotic relationship with mainstream movies like "Sin City," "30 Days of Night," and "300" as well as films based on Spider-Man, Superman and Batman, TV shows like "Smallville" and video games.
"Spider-Man comic book fans line up to see the new Spider-Man movie, and fans of the movies who have never read a comic book come in here to see what it's all about--and get hooked," White says. "These people don't know anything about Spider-Man, but they learn to love him. It works both ways."
That's a good thing, White insists.
Lovers of science fiction and fantasy both young and old "can't really go wrong with Spider-Man and Superman." he says.
"Comic books were supposed to get wiped out by video games," says White, who also works at the Game Stop video game store at Spotsylvania Towne Centre. "But they're still chugging along. It's an overlapping phenomenon."
Comic book titles like Spider-Man are consistently big sellers as games for video console systems.
And as more and more video games allow players to control their own story lines, you don't have to imagine an alternative universe to see the potential for inspiring budding science fiction writers.
Michael Zitz: 540/846-5163
LITTLE FISH COMICS |
