Classic comics make good primers:

Legacy of literate learners

GASTON DE ROSAYRO

Good reading often reflects good writing. Or to put it a more suitable light, good writing and good thinking begin with good reading. If you are an avid reader, then this should not be a problem for you.

Reading helps you get a better grasp of the English language. You are able to see how people use certain words or construct sentences apart from the examples on your language references. In addition, you will also gain more confidence in your own writing style.

I, for one, have been in love with and addicted to books since I was this high. I was and always have been an uncommitted and indiscriminate reader. That is because reading has helped me expand my mind to new ways of expressing myself, articulating specific visuals or describing an individual.

All of which goes to help enrich the reader’s experience. Reading helps keep your writing fresh and flowing. In addition you gain knowledge about subjects that can contribute to your writing or spark an idea. Whether you read about current events, history, biographies, fiction or comics, your writing will benefit, as will your readers.

You should read what you fancy. Like what for instance? Classical authors such as Thackery, Dickens Scott and Kipling, to name a few, are masters of good writing. But give yourself time for lighter reading as well such as thrillers and for a start, quality comic books. Read anything in fact which appeals to your sense of excitement, humour, romance or irony.

Trivial or frivolous is a favourite insult administered by certain highbrow scholars for the type of reading mentioned. But even they became interested in their subject in the first place because they were attracted by something gleaming, flashy and – yes, trivial. People should not look down on comics as they are just as good for children as conventional primers.

I always believed that I have benefitted from comics in the same way I have from reading other types of literature, despite some people often being snooty about them.

Most of my peers say that reading comics is actually a ‘simplified version’ of reading that does not have the complexity of real books with their dense columns of words and lack of pictures. But reading any work successfully, including comics, requires more than just absorbing text.

I have found that comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of reading, and children benefit from reading them at least as much as they do from progressing to reading other kinds of books.

Comic books are actually good for young children! I myself could be living proof of this, having read sheaves of quality comic books as a child from publishers such as D C, Marvel and Dell. I can tell you with certainty that they initially helped increase my vocabulary and instilled in me a love of reading. A lot of the criticism of comics comes from people who think that children are just looking at the pictures and not putting them together with the words.

Possibly it may be the case with some children, yes. But you could easily make some of the same criticisms of picture books that kids are just looking at pictures, and not at the words.

My grandfather realised quite sagaciously that comics were the first step in inculcating the reading habit in impressionable tender minds. And he was spot on. We revelled in reading the exploits of the American cowboy celebrities of the time such as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Wild Bill Elliot, Tom Mix, The Lone Ranger and a host of other Hollywood screen idols who also included Edgar Rice-Burrough’s Tarzan.

In conformity with most children of cultured Ceylonese families in the 50s, who spoke English fluently, I was conversant with American history, perhaps even more than many of my Yankee contemporaries themselves.

That is because of the popularity of the third kind of westerns and novelettes based on real-life Old-West pioneering personalities, such as Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, Buffalo Bill Cody, Kit Carson, Jim Bowie, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Annie Oakley among a host of others.

The comic book world has its own slang and jargon just like any other publication. Even more than books with lots of dialogue, comics can be easy to understand and full of idiomatic language as it is actually spoken. I also learned quite early that American English was strangely different from English English.

I was also made aware by the very presence of ungrammatical sentences not to use them. You latch on quickly to certain words and phrases in American dialect such as for example “allow, guess, reckon”, which means to think. Or the word “gotten”, where “got” is being used as the past participle of “get.”

But, most atrocious to the stiff upper-lip English purists was the heavy use of contractions such as “ain’t, can’t, don’t, and couldn’t”. So, as a matter of fact, you learn not to use words and phrases you shouldn’t, sorry, should not.

Although they have long embraced picture books as appropriate children’s literature, many adults even teachers and librarians who willingly add comics to their collections are too quick to dismiss the suitability of comics as texts for young readers. Any book can be good and any book can be bad, to some extent. It is up to the reader’s personality and intellect. As a whole, comics are just another medium, another genre.

If reading is to lead to any meaningful knowledge or comprehension, readers must approach a text with an understanding of the relevant social, linguistic and cultural conventions. And if you really consider how the pictures and words work together to tell a story, you can make the case that comics are just as complex as any other kind of literature.

The type of quality comic books I have referred to have their place, for a certainty. They are easy reading, and fun reading. The characters and plots are memorable, and the illustrations are unforgettable.

I recommend quality comics as a teaching tool for the young to get them excited about reading and literature.

And for those cynical high-brows who think it a low-brow pursuit let me ask you “to go eat them words.” Besides for all you pseudo-intellectuals who have not read comics I say to you: “You ain’t read nothing yet!”