I happened to stumble upon the haunt of nerds and geeks everywhere while on a trip home last summer; an amazing comic book shop.
To give a bit of perspective, I rarely find the classic comic book shop where I live; the Avengers may be household names in Manila but rarely is there ever specialty shops for all things comic book. This shop in Robinsons Galleria was an exception.
Comic Odyssey specialized in something the likes of Filbar’s or Fully Booked are unable to capitalize on: Back Issues. Issues weren’t just from the past year or two, there were original copies of “The Amazing Spider-Man” from 90’s here, all sold at cover price ($1/PHP50).
This discovery cemented the shop as one of my favorite “tambayans” for the succeeding months.
Remembering this faithful encounter with the classic comic book heroes, I began to contemplate comic books in a new light: Comic books as literature.
There are those would argue that the colored drawings with dialogue won’t pass as literary pieces but, in my humble opinion, comic books have expanded of what we can consider as literature. The stories and elements that are found within the formalistic jury of literariness could very well be found within the brightly colored pages of Marvel and DC.
One can even observe the acknowledgement of comics and literature’s shared roots within the parodies displayed by Deadpool in “Deadpool Killustrated” where Deadpool ,in his standard fourth wall breaking manner, invades classic literature (Moby Dick, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, etc.) and points out that it is within these stories that our superheroes took inspiration from.
If one wished to political depth the likes of Orwell’s works, one could possibly recommend the story of “Watchmen” of Alan Moore that portrays the desolate, pessimistic, and perverted reality of superheroes
Albeit not the first that comes into our mind when we hear “literature”, the comic book genre has gained more traction in being considered as proper literature. It may just be only a matter of time before we see the literary scholars start taking note of Superman’s heroics and psychoanalyzing Batman’s repressed unconscious.
Over the Corner 