Graphic Novels and Manga: Literature or Not?

I recently finished the Death Note series by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata . It spans twelve volumes and has inspired two live-action movies and a television series that now airs on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. It is an exciting series with hints of mystery and twists around every corner. The summary as described on the back cover says, "Light Yagami is an ace student with great prospects - and bored out of his mind! But all that changes when he finds the Death Note, a notebook dropped by a rogue shinigami death god. Any human whose name is written in the notebook dies, and now Light has vowed to use the power of the Death Note to rid the world of evil. But when criminals begin dropping dead, the authorities send the legendary detective L to track down the killer. With L hot on his heels, will Light lose sight of his noble goal... or his life?" I read them non-stop for hours on end and talked about them excitedly with anyone who would listen. After one such discussion with my fiance', Asia, she turned and asked me, "Do you think graphic novels and manga count as literature?" I stopped dead in the middle of my thought process; I had no response. So today I plan to explore that question.

Literature, according to Merriam-Webster, is defined as: "writings in prose or verse; especially : writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest." With that in mind, let us continue. I have read a few graphic novels, but I have read more manga over the years. A short list includes; Welcome to the Jungle by Jim Butcher, Wanted by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, World of Warcraft Legends, Death Note, and Case Closed by Gosho Aoyama. I am a big fan of Neil Gaiman and I plan to read his Sandman series, but that will cost a large chunk of money I don't have right now. People may think that these types of books are just anthologies of comic strips, but I believe they are much more than that. Well, here's the rub. Graphic novels (or manga) can vary wildly in quality of verse and in my opinion only some can be considered literature. That's not to say that they don't effectively tell a story. The fact is, some of these books are more reliant on their words and some rely on the pictures to move the plot along. A book series such as Legends is composed of short stories by various authors and those authors are paired up with prominent artists. These stories rely on the words of the authors and the artists interpretations of those words. But the stories are only as good as the author who wrote them. No matter how good the artwork is, a bad story with fundamentally flawed elements is not literature because it is not "excellent in form or expression."

Then there is a series like Death Note. By the time I reached the fifth book in the series I stopped looking at the pictures and just read the captions. They are well written and deal with very mature themes. I believe that the author effectively illustrated a message of universal importance and that they should be classified as literature. Therefore the literary merit of these books should be decided on a case by case basis by the reading audience. If children's books can be considered literature there is no reason why graphic novels can't be. Authors and illustrators work very hard at what they do. When they choose to combine pictures with written words they should not be discredited for doing so. However, people should not rely on illustrations entirely. It is important to make your own mental images of the stories in order to exercise your imagination and practice your wordcraft.