Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean [Hardcover]

This is rather a difficult book to review. While I definitely appreciate the fact that comics are being treated seriously as a scholarly work, I'm not really sure that this book is, in fact, what it claims to be. The first third of the book is ostensibly dedicated to a discussion of the format of comics and he potential of the medium, but Wolk constantly peppers the book with condescending commentary on mainstream books even as he purports to love them, going so far at one point as to suggest that there's something developmentally wrong with an adult who still enjoys a character he enjoyed as a child. While there's certainly nothing wrong with the heavy bias towards independent comics this book displays, he often paints most superhero comics with the same brush (except, of course, for perennial exceptions Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and a few others). In other words, he does quite a bit to perpetuate the same primitive attitudes about comics that this book supposedly works to dispel.

The rest of the book is essentially a recommended reading list, with chapters devoted to different comic creators and their work. This section, honestly, is rather predictable. He gushes over the work of Alan Moore (even the total derailment of Promethea), pretentiously assures us that it's "okay" to read Dave Sim and Steve Ditko though they display (horrors!) conservative ideas in their work, and talks about the mastery of Maus. Not to say this section is all bad. Even in his predictability, he provides a very strong analysis of the Hernandez brothers' work, that of Chris Ware, of Chester Brown, and several other names that a mainstream reader may never have heard of. Perhaps the best chapter in the book is his analysis of Grant Morrison's work, which has actually convinced me to give The Invisibles another try. (I was put off by the anarchist tone of the first volume, something that doesn't appeal to me, but the idea in the analysis that the intended readers of the comic are actually people who have already read it makes me think that it's worth trying again).

This isn't a bad book - there are a lot of interesting ideas and thoughtful insights into comics as a whole and several comics in particular. But in the end, Wolk suffers the same fate as a lot of people who have tried to analyze comics as an artform. Simply put, the book thinks it's more important than it actually is.

There's a lot to recommend this book. No matter how versed you are in comics (I'm not), you're sure to find something new here about an amazingly complex medium.

But it's got some annoying flaws. Particularly in the first third of the book, it can be seriously geeky when it should be introductory and welcoming. You may find yourself stumbling on what seems like fan jargon or expert knowledge. I didn't(and still don't) understand the stylistic differences between Jack Kirby's early and late work. But that's the kind of thing Wolk more or less assumes at times.

At best, the book has some wonderful visual analyses of comic panels and styles. That's good, because most of the arguments require you to trust the visual descriptions. For a book about comics there aren't nearly enough illustrations, and none in color. How about a companion website where readers could look at more than a few low-quality black and white reproductions?

But Wolk's writing style gets annoying at this length. The book's trying to be academic and authoritative, but do it with a casual writing style. It doesn't work. Wolk often writes like a smart blogger; in other words, like someone who *really* needs an editor with a sharp red pencil. For example, he'll use annoying terms like "wave at" or "poke at" to mean "show" and "examine." He has a short "interview" between himself and Mr. Straw Man which feels like a clumsy way of avoiding constructing actual prose. Or he'll discover a new ten-dollar word (like "somatic") and use it two or three times in as many pages. He uses cliched writing (calling someone "a god-awful hack") constantly.

Worst, nearly every page has at least two or three parenthetical phrases, which makes following arguments clunky. An editor would have deleted these as either truly side comments, or else rewritten them to be part of the argument.

You might not be bothered by these things, though I was. They get in the way of reading and following what's actually a pretty subtle and worked-out argument.

As a childhood comics fan returned to the medium as an adult in search of meaningful entertainment, I appreciated Wolk's book as timely for comics' present moment, perhaps even overdue. Few corners of American comics aren't discussed and none go unmentioned. Wolk's book provides adequately theoretical, satisfying discussions of both "mainstream" superhero comics and "art comics", mapping them in the constellation of American popular culture. It helps that Wolk is a music critic as well; Wolk writes accessibly, like a reviewer or critic, and is unapologetic about comics as pleasure-reading first, with enormous artistic potential behind them. He discusses a serious American comic fan's range of work in a thought-provoking manner (from Ware and Bechdel to Moore and Miller), but informs readers enough to avoid sounding like the snooty "you-haven't-read-that?" comics junkie expounding arcane comics references. Not perfect, but plenty good for a reader like me.