Words tell, images show. This is perhaps why comic journalism has taken a whole new ground today. From being considered as a medium restricted to a young audience, concerning frivolous topics, graphic narratives have started to be considered as pieces of critical worth and appreciation. Be it whole graphic novels or the little strips of satire that come in the newspapers, comic journalism has claimed its strong footing.
The Amul comic snippets are, perhaps, the earliest forms of comic journalism in India. Providing commentary on the happenings of the country, the brand does an amazing job of marketing through public criticism. Not only does the brand become a criticism of the current affairs of the country but it breaks social stereotypes with a girl being the face of this criticism. Going against the conception of female as docile and fragile, the brand uses the gender as a tool of strength and resistance. Not just this. The fact that the Amul face is a girl, and not a woman, shows the natural inquisitiveness of children, unlike their popular representations of them as non-thinking beings.
Going on a larger scale, Spiegelman’s Maus shook the world. This wasn’t the first book to talk about the Holocaust or the sufferings of the Jews under Hitler. In fact, by the time Spiegelman’s books came out, this was a topic much written and discussed about. If, in spite of this, the books garnered such attention and love from the audience like the way it did, it is because of the innovative representation and the medium he chose. With Jews as being represented as rats and Germans as cats, the books bring in a predatory nature to the latter, without ever mentioning this. These are the perks of using a graphic narrative medium: the possibilities of representation and interpretation are much more than what written words can claim of.
With an image, the process of interpretation becomes the reader’s responsibility. Not only does this make the reader an active participant in the process, making it a more engaging experience for them, but it also gives more power of criticism to the writer. The writer can say a lot without having to face the repercussions of doing so. No one can sue the writer for an interpretation they have made because the writer can always claim that this was not his or her intention. With power and freedom to express through details, a graphic narrator can be much more critical than a writer.
Memes are probably the latest kind of comic journalism. Using images and words in a manner that can be interpreted in the given social context, they are the latest sources of resistance to the political happenings of the world. If they make us laugh, it’s only because we are familiar with the problem they address and understand the absurdity of it ourselves.
Comic journalism has been here since long and is here to stay. That said, it is not merely a necessity but an indispensability today. Widening its possibilities and offering a path to imagination, comic journalism bridges the gap between a reader and a writer. As words continue to inspire, graphics will continue to influence.
N Malavika Mohan