Many people, I know, are wary of comics. At first I was nervous too, but then I got nervous again and remembered how I accidentally got a comic about Donald Duck as a child, and how I was glued to it for a long time. It was in the early 90s, and these adventures of a duck without pants, but in a sailor hat were, of course, very fresh and avant-garde. I really liked rereading short phrases and looking at the pictures again and again, constantly discovering new details. There were no more comics in my childhood, and the next time I encountered them was already an adult. “Ugh! Entertainment for children. I need to read normal books,” I thought, without holding a single comic in my hands.
But then – hmm, hmm? – it turned out that many films were based on comics… How could a whole film for adults with a multi-million dollar budget and huge box office receipts be based on some children’s pictures? A break with the mold. Reputable publishers release gorgeous books with intriguing titles and hard covers, and inside is a “graphic novel”?! Another cognitive dissonance. Then my husband began drawing comics for the company he worked for at the time, and I sometimes came up with plots for them, but I still thought that this low genre had nothing to do with me.
In the end, I decided to read "Pasternak", whom I condemned, in secret from everyone. "Pasternak" turned out to be strangely attractive, although I did not admit it even to myself. And then my child grew up, and comics began to appear in our house. It turned out that they can be used, firstly, to teach reading, and secondly, to compose stories based on pictures, which in our childhood was a full-fledged homework assignment throughout elementary school, which is not so easy to cope with. It developed speech, observation, the ability to analyze - what a useful task! And the child, yes, also quickly became imbued and can look at the pictures for a long time, noticing the smallest features. And then, as a strange vision of a bygone era (oh, Pasternak again!), "Funny Pictures" and "The Adventures of Murzilka" appeared to me. Wow! And there were more comics in my childhood than I assumed! Well, kids love comics, okay, and it turns out we grew up with them too, so be it. With kids, everything is clear. But why do adults read them? Maybe because comics satisfy the needs of both visuals and digitals? Well, just like posts on social networks: everyone loves beautiful pictures with good text under them, right? ;) The same comics are just one frame. Or maybe we just shouldn't compare comics with "normal books"? Comics are drawn by good artists, and their works deserve to be looked at, and a small amount of text leaves room for the imagination.
And by the way, don't worry about a comic book that costs as much as a full-length novel being a one-night entertainment. Yes, a child will probably read it in one sitting, but if he likes it, he will return to it again and again, precisely because it doesn't take much time to read, unlike long works, most of which we reread at best a couple of times in our lives.
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