1 is the loneliest number

Before yesterday, not only had I never read a graphic novel before, I also was not exactly clear yet on what they really were. I think this is a common problem, because when I told my roommates what English class I was taking, they were distressed that I would apparently be reading about Spiderman for fifteen weeks.

I myself was like pre-age eight Scott McCloud, destined to read "real" literature, which certainly does not involve speech bubbles. My first contact with graphic novels reinforced my view, when my best friend in high school told me that her boyfriend like graphic novels because he could not concentrate well enough and long enough to read a real novel.

Imagine my surprise then when by the second or third page of Blankets I was hit with an emotional punch the equivalent of which I have not felt since approximately the time I read Where the Red Fern Grows in fifth grade, and certainly did not feel when I read "real" novels like Tess of the d'Urbervilles last semester. By page nineteen, I wanted to get on the phone with my sister, our relationship seeming to be the basis of the brotherly relationship in the novel, and apologize for every garbage thing I have ever done concerning her.

Who knew a simple (shudder) comic could hit so close to home? But Craig and Phil are us. I the realist, she the imaginer. I the dreamer, she the one who would try to follow in my footsteps if I would let her. But in a strange twist, she is the artist, while my stick figures beg to be put out of their misery.

In this novel, unlike I imagined, the pictures do not cheapen the words, but rather give them their full meaning. The words pull the brothers apart, the fake snoring, the telling of the world's harsh realities. The pictures bring them together: the way they both have superhero emblems on their pajamas, the claw marks of Phil's in the cubby hole that are the same as Craig's on the school bathroom mirror, Craig's real hand next to Phil's turkey handprint.

So with this new viewpoint in mind, one of a literature in which words do not have the final say, I look forward to what graphic novels have to show me this semester.

Sarah