Why I Can’t Speak French
When I was in high school we were required to study a foreign language. Living in South Florida, the prudent choice would have been to take Spanish and to actually pay attention in class but I chose to do neither. I chose to take the class that had the highest percentage of boys with long hair and black turtleneck sweaters: Mrs. Murray’s French class. I also chose to spend the majority of the semester looking over the shoulder of one Aaron Schantz, who had neither long hair nor a black turtleneck sweater, but who had something I found—to my surprise—much more interesting. No, it was not the secret to conjugating verbs in the past perfect tense. No, what Aaron had was a bag full of comic books and he would hide them in his French textbook and read them all period. And I would crane my neck to read over his shoulder until he got sick of me breathing down his neck and he gave me a stack to hide in my own textbook. And that is why I can’t speak French.
Though an avid reader, I had never before considered comic books as a valid literary option. They always just seemed like the hyper-active second-cousin to the Sunday funnies: all flash and tight pants and no substance. But boy was I wrong. Comics are visually compelling with complicated story-lines and intriguing characters—and they are not limited to adventure stories or superheroes. The medium is changing and evolving. Some of the most innovative story-telling and visual artistry is happening in comics. I’ve loved watching the form grow and discovering for myself artists and writers like Lynda Barry, Daniel Clowes, and Chris Ware.
With literary magazines publishing them, respected authors like Sherman Alexie and Mat Johnson (of the University of Houston) creating them, and awards like the Pulitzer and the National Book Award honoring them, comics are definitely not just for French class anymore. I have recently decided to get off the sidelines and into the comics game myself—working in collaboration with my extremely talented artist mother, I have written and had accepted for publication my first literary comic. We are working on several more and in this blog I will talk about the collaboration process and the art of literary comics.
Who knows, maybe I’ll make a few comics fans along the way—though don’t follow my lead on the French thing. If you are in a French class, you should pay attention and save the comics for later. Because then you can read comics in English and French. Très awesome!