Past Due

Given that Watchmen has been in print in trade book form since 1987, and Love and Rockets collections since 1985, not to mention the work done by folks like Joe Sacco, Alison Bechdel, and many, many others, it is of course wildly overdue that the Los Angeles Times Festival Books has only just now created a graphic novels category in its prizes.  I'm strongly in favor of keeping a separate category for graphic novels, since fictional prose is fundamentally different from a fusion of words and images.  The brain just processes the information differently.  We do work filling in visual details with our own imaginations when we read novels that's not part of the engagement when we read graphic novels (at least, it works that way for me).  But there's just absolutely no denying that graphic novels fit under the broad rubric of literature, and should be considered seriously by critics, readers, and prize committees alike.