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Construction Before Deconstruction: The Importance of Comprehension Before Analysis

What is a comic book? Or more primitively what are comics? For years artists and researchers alike have attempted to define this unique art form that walks the line between the written word and visual storytelling. Using a combination of words, visual symbols, icons, varied composition, framing, etc. the comic has been a hard medium to fully define – to pin down – and that has made people unnecessarily nervous throughout the years. Due to this distrust, comics have a rocky history with the American public, especially, and unrightfully so, in regards to the public school system. Using Scott McCloud’s genesis work Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, I will attempt to give a brief synopsis of the nature of the comic and their effects on those who read them. While doing this I will try to debunk the opinionated stance of the many critics of comics. I will also reference the article Deconstructive Comics by Ronald Schmitt, which was published in the Journal of Popular Culture in 1992. While I agree with the majority of Schmitt’s statements, he tends to write with a bias towards the work of Fredric Wertham, a man whose studies may have single-handedly banned comics from the classroom for nearly 25 years. I will use some of the positive comments by Schmitt and others to definitively refute Wertham’s and his contemporaries’ negative opinions against comics. I think before we attempt to critically deconstruct comics, it’s important to fully understand them, their purposes, and their true effect on the reader.
In Scott McCloud’s masterpiece, Understanding Comics, he spends considerable time trying to define the comic. Starting with Will Eisner’s simple definition of “sequential art,” McCloud critically takes this a step forward bit by bit to determine a definition more suitable to today’s comic – attempting to eliminate confusion and solidify a still widely misunderstood art form. The definition McCloud establishes is:
com-ics (kom’iks)n. plural in form, used with a singular verb. 1. Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.

Using this definition McCloud delves into the history of comics. Generally speaking, one could argue comics date back to the 14th Century, when ancient peoples would record history on cave walls and produce elaborate tapestries depicting great wars and conquests (McCloud 10-15). In a sense, these are comics. These great works of ancient art were visual narratives to be read using pictures and symbols placed in deliberate sequence. However, I’ll return to comics’ relationship with “high” art later, but first I want to discuss comics as we know them today. For this argument it is important to recognize I am generally speaking of comics as the art form and entertainment medium that entered pop culture and the American consciousness in the mid-20th Century, captivating children and appalling adults (Schmitt 154).
Many adults, especially those in the educational field, were disgusted with comics appeal to young children. This was due to the supposed content of the comic book. Comics tackled issues that challenged the status quo. Although reading aimed at younger audiences, comics didn’t shy away from complicated metaphor and allegory in their story lines. The tales of superheroes were more often than not critiques on politics and the wars being waged overseas, most notably World War II. Even Schmitt states in his article Deconstructive Comics that, “comic book characters reveal essential myths and ideologies of the cultures in which they are produced,” (Schmitt 154). This can be compared to classical Greek mythology depicting stories of the gods for example. Since comics, as much as any piece of worthy pop culture should, challenges and questions that status quo, critics begin to refer to the art form as frivolous and trivial – think of Facebook before it revolutionized the way we “talk” to one another. However, if we go back to McCloud we can see that comics share many of the same traits as masterful works of art. As any art historian would argue, good art is meant to elicit an aesthetic and cognitive reaction from the viewer – to be the cause of critical thinking and analysis. So why was it that educational and political figureheads of the 1950’s were so vehemently against a medium that in my mind provided an education in metaphor and storytelling while addressing current events?
In addition to Wertham’s attacks on the content of comic books, he also strongly opposes comics’ effect on the way children read. Schmitt quotes Wertham as saying, “This kind of picture reading is not actually a form of reading…It is an evasion of reading and almost its opposite…for the habit of picture reading interferes with the acquisition of well-developed reading habits.” After defending comics’ content, Schmitt goes on to agree with Wertham in his claims that comics are damaging the way young people learn to read. Schmitt states, “Indeed, the skills involved in comic book ‘reading’ in no way prepare a youngster for prink-block text literacy.” This is where I begin to critically disagree with Schmitt. Wertham even ventures to dramatically state, “Comic books are death on reading,” (Dorrell, Curtis, and Rampal 225).
In the article, Book-worms Without Books? Students Reading Comic Books in the School House, through research it was found that the reading of comics had no effect on average to above average students when it came to reading comprehension and performance in school. The article cites the study conducted by educationist Florence Heisler saying, “Heisler found no connection between the reading of comics and the intelligence level of students. Nor did the reading ability differ between those who read comics and those who did not.” In addition, it was found that reading comics was actually beneficial to remedial or below average students. The article references the work of Robert Thorndike, which states, “comic books were a valuable aid in vocabulary building” and that comics were “beneficial in the area of remedial reading.” Therefore, at the time, proponents of comics attempted to incorporate them into the school curriculum. However, Wertham’s damaging writings prohibited this from happening (Dorrell, Curtis, and Rampal 226).
Furthermore, Schmitt notes Wertham’s observations that the development of left-to-right eye coordination used for reading is hindered by the composition of the comic book. Schmitt supports this by saying the comic book, “is a form of self-inflicted ‘double-writing,’ collapsing traditional strategies for reading word and picture texts.” On the contrary, the standard composition of the comic book frame adheres to the left-to-right, top-to-bottom tradition of reading. And in addition, as McCloud points out, the framing of comics encourages the reader to make connections between images and word – using imagination and critical thinking to enhance understanding. Fitting action, time, space, motion, and more into a series of frames forces readers to perform “closure” between the gaps of the comic book frame to create meaning, fostering visual literacy (McCloud 63).
Therefore, I think Wertham’s claims are extraordinarily outdated and incorrect, and those who still agree with him misunderstand comic books’ true nature. I believe the content of comics is what pushes it past the amateur status, and into the real world of art. In addition, the layout and design, or composition, of comics is equally impressive and contributes to its “high” art classification. The combination of icons, symbols, text, imagery, and so on to create a visually comprehensible narrative should provide a lesson to us all. It is a way to read, a way to learn how to be visually literate, which is of increasing importance due to the variety of images we must interpret on a daily basis.


Works Cited
Dorrell, Larry D., Dan B. Curtis, and Kuldip R. Rampal. "Book-worms Without Books? Students Reading Comic Books in the School House." Journal of Popular Culture. 29.2 (1995): 223-235. Print.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1994. Print.

Schmitt, Ronald. "Deconstructive Comics." Journal of Popular Culture. 25.4 (1992): 153-160. Print.