Full Disclosure: this panel was composed of my employer and two cartoonists published by Fantagraphics. Therefore I am going to paraphrase what was said with no additional commentary.
Seattle Bookfest held a graphic-novel panel on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009, which took place in an elementary school converted into an event center. It was standing-room only in the portable building when Fantagraphics' Gary Groth introduced two cartoonists he publishes, Megan Kelso, creator of the minicomic and website
Girlhero and the collections
Queen of the Black Black,
The Squirrel Mother, the serial
Watergate Sue and the upcoming full-length graphic novel
Artichoke Tales; and Ellen Forney (
Monkey Food,
I Love Led Zeppelin and
Lust, illustrator of Sherman Alexie's
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian) who also teaches at Cornish, a local arts college. Top Shelf's Leigh Walton, who handles marketing and edits the website Top Shelf 2.0, was also on the panel.
Forney kicked things off by explaining that she had taught a studio graphic novel class, which was composed of art and design students; however, she recently began teaching a graphic-novel lit class, which focuses on reading and discussing comics with students from different majors. She said it was a different experience: that the students weren't as versed in the language of comics. Groth said that they weren't acculturated to comics, and since they weren't habituated, they didn't have the skill to know how to read them.
He took an informal poll of the room: about 10% had had difficulty when they first began reading comics; about 80% of the room currently read them frequently. Kelso, who did not grow up reading comics, commented that she used to read the words and forget to read the pictures. She noted that comics are like a foreign language: when one sees words that are familiar, one tends to neglect the rest. Absorbing pictures is a skill, she explicated: and, again like a foreign language, children learn it more easily, and it becomes natural. She said that before she goes to bed she would rather read a book than a comic, because a comic feels like more "work": a comic feels more like conscious effort.
An audience member asked the panel if, when they used the word "comics," they were making a distinction between newspaper strips like
Calvin and Hobbes and graphic novels, and they said no. Another audience member remarked that she found manga easier to read than American graphic novels, because the paper was cheaper, so they use more of it and the art is more "spread out."
Walton clarified that American comics are denser, and then responded to Kelso by saying that, since he's always read comics, he feels that comics are less draining to read. After a disclaimer in which he established that none of the panelists were neurologists, he went on to say that research suggested that reading comics taps into more parts of the brain that simply reading text alone. He also mentioned that manga is influencing the current generation of cartoonists, who are creating hybrids.
He followed up some of Kelso's other points by saying that it's easier for kids to read a comic than a chapter book, because kids read the images first, then go to the language. Kelso supported that statement by explaining that her 3 ½ year-old daughter likes to "read" the
Peanuts books by herself. Even though her daughter can't technically read the words, she can visually recognize some of them: in this way she learned the word "ahem."
Forney broke in that there's a middle ground between words and comics. She used Alison Bechdel's
Fun Home as an example, saying that every time she reads it, she gets more out of it. She said that the first time, she read it for the story, but when she reads it more than once, she slows down and pays more attention to the pictures, because there's so much going on in them, such as visual references to the minotaur (Bechdel compares her father to the minotaur, as well as many other things).
Groth posed the question: does a graphic novel fail if you can read it without looking at the pictures? Forney pointed out that comics can just be pictures too, or "silent." Groth asked Kelso if she thought "silent" comics were more work, and she said yes. Walton said that you should ask yourself "What am I meant to get out of this image?" In Jeff Lemire's
Essex County, he went on to say, a dialogue-heavy sequence will be followed by a wordless landscape, which is the view out of one character's window.
An audience member brought up how there was two types of imagery in comics: the representative, exemplified by sweat drops, etc., and the realistic. Kelso replied that she was thinking that comics were a foursquare thing: there's realistic drawing, but sweat beads function more like writing. On the writing side, words can be used in a pictorial way (for example, by lettering): both the pictures and the writing function on at least two levels each, on multiple channels. Walton agreed, saying that they're operating on at least as many levels as text, we just haven't learned how to talk about all the levels as a culture.
Forney brought up the visual language of comics and contrasted the spare, more realistic drawings of Daniel Clowes with the cartoony style of Peter Bagge. She pointed out that if Bagge's
Buddy Does Seattle, a book her class is studying, was drawn in a realistic style it would have a different effect. She said that in
Fun Home, the chapter intro pages are drawn in a realistic style, while the chapters themselves are cartoonier, and that Bechdel uses these styles deliberately.
Kelso said that people read comics really quickly, and that cartoonists always complain "I spent 10 years on this, and it was read on the toilet!" Kelso expanded by saying that many people think of comics as throwaway, like a romance or spy novel, they're not going to linger over it. Groth interjected that comic books, when they were invented in the '30s, were intended for G.I.s, children and morons. (Walton joked, "We're raising the prices so that you'll take them more seriously.")
An audience member, who teaches grades 5-8, said that students understand sweat drops unconsciously, it's part of their knowledge. Groth said that many of these conventions are used in the newspaper comics too, which are still fairly widely read. Forney stated that what she has to offer her students is that she's a cartoonist. She went on to say that she taught her students to look at colors, such as the almost-hospital green in Clowes' comics. She also said that she had them read Scott McCloud's
Understanding Comics. Comics are compared to film, with good reason, she went on, but they're different.
Walton held that visual organization is helpful for keeping things organized in our head. He cited
Understanding Comics also, saying that McCloud would condense complex ideas into an icon, and then use that icon to represent that idea for the rest of the book. "I'm a visual learner," Walton began, and then said that they're doing more research now as to the different kind of learning styles, and that certain comics pages will always stay in his memory.
Forney recommended
Understanding Comics. Kelso said that the book was really helpful for her. She said the book came out when she first started cartooning (in 1993, Walton threw in). She didn't understand the conventions of comics at that time, and via the book, she learned what visual tools cartoonists use. She said she would never forget the sequence where McCloud illustrated the use of space in two panels. He had drawn the same objects, drawn identically, in both panels: a person, a lamp and a table, but in one the space was tight. In the other panel, there was more distance between the panels, and this gave it a different feeling. I was going "doing!" she said. The use of the space is the tool, is the writing. Though it's a technical concept, it was the key to understanding for the reader: it's not about the ability to render, it's like writing. Forney concurred that texture is also part of the story that the cartoonist is trying to tell, like the soundtrack of a movie: you don't notice it, but it has a huge impact.
Walton also suggested Jessica Abel and Matt Madden's
Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, and commented on comics as a hybrid art form, where it's not about image for the sake of image, but in service of a story. He said that comics are still in their infancy, that more people are making comics than ever before and the vocabulary is still being worked out. An audience member asked how many comics were being created by groups, and Groth said probably the majority.
Forney expressed surprise, saying that she was used to comics created by one person. Walton said that comics is a big enough house that it has many rooms, and it's possible for someone to stay in one room. Forney mentioned that DC turned over their beloved characters to alternative cartoonists in its
Bizzaro anthology, but the cartoonists weren't allowed to both write and draw the strips. She said she was told it was for copyright reasons. Kelso said it was to keep you down.
Groth responded to Walton's earlier point by saying that the biggest advances in comics in recent decades, since the undergrounds of the '60s, are probably because single creators are driving the work. An audience member then asked the cartoonists about their process. Kelso told her that her process had changed over the years: at first, she would write out an entire short story, because she didn't "think" in comics. As she became more fluent in the visual language, she would make more screenplay-y scripts, and only in the last three years has she begun to do little panels and drawings.
Forney said that she was the opposite, that she began as more of a drawer than a writer, and it just depends on the creator when it comes to process. She finished the panel by saying that in her class, she taught a version of her own process, which was to get an idea, do research, do some sort of script, and then thumbnail, pencil, scan and tweak.
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2008
Forney broke in that there's a middle ground between words and comics. She used Alison Bechdel's Fun Home as an example, saying that every time she reads it, she gets more out of it. She said that the first time, she read it for the story, but when she reads it more than once, she slows down and pays more attention to the pictures, because there's so much going on in them, such as visual references to the minotaur (Bechdel compares her father to the minotaur, as well as many other things). 
An audience member brought up how there was two types of imagery in comics: the representative, exemplified by sweat drops, etc., and the realistic. Kelso replied that she was thinking that comics were a foursquare thing: there's realistic drawing, but sweat beads function more like writing. On the writing side, words can be used in a pictorial way (for example, by lettering): both the pictures and the writing function on at least two levels each, on multiple channels. Walton agreed, saying that they're operating on at least as many levels as text, we just haven't learned how to talk about all the levels as a culture. 
Groth responded to Walton's earlier point by saying that the biggest advances in comics in recent decades, since the undergrounds of the '60s, are probably because single creators are driving the work. An audience member then asked the cartoonists about their process. Kelso told her that her process had changed over the years: at first, she would write out an entire short story, because she didn't "think" in comics. As she became more fluent in the visual language, she would make more screenplay-y scripts, and only in the last three years has she begun to do little panels and drawings. 
