I actually don't like illustrated stories, since I feel like the illustrations get in the way of how I picture the characters. It annoys me to come across illustrations that look nothing like my mental image. But in those cases it's more an issue of the illustrator being more of an afterthought than an asset or selling-point.
What graphic novels have you tried to read? Because if it was Sandman... yeah. Actually, I could tell you very little about the art that goes along with that, other than the basic look of things. The way Gaiman writes, I find it really hard to pay attention to the words and the pictures at the same time, so it ends up being a very different experience from most other comics and graphic novels. (But I really didn't much like the art for Sandman, either. And that makes a huge difference. I'm not a huge fan of Sandman, even though I love the characters, because so much of the art is just... meh, to me.) In the end, a lot of it comes down to actually liking the art style for a graphic novel (or manga), because if you don't want to look at the pictures, there's not much point to it. (Which is why there are vast swaths of manga I just can't get into, whether it's because I hate the art, or because I love the art but can't stand the story.)
Jimmy Corrigan, in my experience, is pretty much the quintessential graphic novel, in that it relies really almost exclusively on the images to tell the story (there's very little text, and it's a bit like reading a diagram of a movie (which doesn't sound appealing, but the way you're guided across the pages is really pretty cool). Speaking of... I wonder if it'd help if you read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, which sort of explains the tricks to actually getting something out of the experience, and the mechanics of what comic artists are trying to do (but then, I love academic treatises on things that most people don't delve into very seriously). But if you just don't like picture-stories there's not much that can be done to fix that, regardless of what I throw at you. (-;)
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Re: Questions? Complaints?
Date: 2011-06-18 03:33 am (UTC)What graphic novels have you tried to read? Because if it was Sandman... yeah. Actually, I could tell you very little about the art that goes along with that, other than the basic look of things. The way Gaiman writes, I find it really hard to pay attention to the words and the pictures at the same time, so it ends up being a very different experience from most other comics and graphic novels. (But I really didn't much like the art for Sandman, either. And that makes a huge difference. I'm not a huge fan of Sandman, even though I love the characters, because so much of the art is just... meh, to me.) In the end, a lot of it comes down to actually liking the art style for a graphic novel (or manga), because if you don't want to look at the pictures, there's not much point to it. (Which is why there are vast swaths of manga I just can't get into, whether it's because I hate the art, or because I love the art but can't stand the story.)
Jimmy Corrigan, in my experience, is pretty much the quintessential graphic novel, in that it relies really almost exclusively on the images to tell the story (there's very little text, and it's a bit like reading a diagram of a movie (which doesn't sound appealing, but the way you're guided across the pages is really pretty cool). Speaking of... I wonder if it'd help if you read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, which sort of explains the tricks to actually getting something out of the experience, and the mechanics of what comic artists are trying to do (but then, I love academic treatises on things that most people don't delve into very seriously). But if you just don't like picture-stories there's not much that can be done to fix that, regardless of what I throw at you. (-;)