British Journal of Aesthetics Vol 49

COMICS AS LITERATURE? |  229 

comics in which the text takes up more space than the pictures (Phoebe Gloeckner’s  ‘ I 

Hate Comics ’  published in  The Comics Journal Special Edition, Winter 2002  is a good example), 

as well as cases of children’s literature where the pictures take up more room than the text. 

That such conditions could not help exclude comics from the literary — let alone serve as a 

defi ning condition of comics — is not surprising. The decisions as to what element of a 

comic will carry the narrative (if there is one!) and as to the relative size of imagery versus 

text are  stylistic  decisions. Such stylistic decisions are unlikely to underwrite necessary con-

ditions for membership in an art form category. 

 Similarly, one might be tempted to exclude comics from the literary sphere by appeal to 

the  aesthetic  preponderance of images in comics. For it might seem that the images in a 

comic are ultimately more important or more signifi cant to its evaluation and appreciation 

than the other elements (e.g. dialogue, text). Surely the text in a work of literature is al-

ways more aesthetically important than any images in it. Again, these are overgeneraliza-

tions. When it comes to many comics, the pictures are arguably more important to their 

overall appreciation and evaluation than the text or story. But this is also a matter of stylis-

tic choice. Just as there are fi lms in which the sound is plausibly more important than the 

images (e.g. Jonathan Demme’s  Swimming to Cambodia  and  Stop Making Sense ), so too there 

are comics where the words and dialogue seem more aesthetically important than the pic-

tures. In fact, the contemporary humorous newspaper comic strip provides an example of 

an entire genre of comics in which is the case. Anyone who thinks the images in  Cathy   or 

 Dilbert  are of more aesthetic signifi cance than the words has simply failed to grasp the na-

ture and success conditions for works in that genre. 

 It is, on the other hand, plausible that some sort of preponderance condition might be 

used to mark a very broad distinction between the two categories in question. On just 

about any conception of  ‘ preponderance ’ , a preponderance of text over image is  standard  

with respect to the category of literature and  contra-standard  for the category of comics —

 vice versa for a preponderance of image over text. 

41

  But this would not provide a basis for 

denying that the two categories overlap since we are clearly not dealing here with neces-

sary or suffi cient conditions. And signifi cant overlap is all we need in order to establish an 

interesting   ‘ comics  as  literature ’   thesis. 

 The upshot is that despite the intuitive appeal of the preponderance condition for distin-

guishing comics from literature, I do not see an obvious way of harnessing it to exclude all 

of the former from falling into the latter category. There is, then, good reason to think 

some comics are works of literature. But I shall now suggest that there are also some good 

reasons for thinking that comics — or at least the vast majority of them — cannot count as 

literature.  

  Against Comics as Literature 

 I have just argued that an appeal to a  ‘ preponderance of image over text ’  will not straightfor-

wardly provide a basis for rejecting the  ‘ comics as literature ’  thesis. But those attracted to 

various Wittgensteinian or Wittgensteinian-inspired approaches to understanding concepts 

  41    

      For  the  notions  of  standard  and  contra-standard  invoked  here,  see  Walton,   ‘ Categories  of  Art’,  p.  339.  

 at University of Athens on June 19, 2011

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 230  | AARON MESKIN

(e.g. family resemblance, cluster, or prototype accounts) may insist that the presence of a 

preponderance of image over text is  criterial  (although not suffi cient) for falling outside of 

the extension of the concept of literature. Perhaps — as Berys Gaut might put it — some such 

preponderance  ‘ counts as a matter of conceptual necessity toward an object’s falling under ’  

the concept NOT-LITERATURE. 

42

  Now Gaut’s particular account of what  ‘ counting to-

ward ’  amounts to is problematic, 

43

  but the general idea here is not implausible and one need 

not deny that the concept of literature admits of a traditional defi nition in order to accept 

the crucial claim. The fact that a work contains a preponderance of images over text (in 

whatever sense of  ‘ preponderance ’  you like) plausibly provides defeasible evidence that it is 

not literature; that is, although such a fact does not entail that the object in question is not 

literature it surely makes it  more likely  that it is not literature. Put differently, if some prepon-

derance of image over text is truly contra-standard with respect to the category of literature, 

then it is a feature which  ‘ tends to  disqualify  works as members of the category ’ . 

44

  I have 

argued that it cannot straightforwardly disqualify something from being literature, but the 

tendency to do so is enough to motivate the argument. It is precisely from such a claim that 

someone who denies that comics are literature will start to make their case. 

 Not all comics contain a preponderance of image over text, and any such preponderance 

we fi nd in a particular comic will not by itself exclude it from the category of literature. But 

if we fi nd a range of other features possessed by all or most comics that are also contra-

standard for literature (or that are criterial for the concept NOT-LITERATURE), signifi -

cant pressure will be exerted on the  ‘ comics as literature ’  thesis. We will either have reason 

to doubt that any version of the thesis is true or — perhaps more likely — have good reason 

to restrict the range of the thesis to a very narrow selection of atypical comics (e.g. ones that 

are mostly text). Such a restriction would signifi cantly reduce the interest of the thesis. 

 I believe that we can put signifi cant pressure on the thesis by this route. Consider, for 

example, the putative distinction between the autographic and allographic arts as intro-

duced by Nelson Goodman in his 1976 book  Languages of Art . 

45

  Here is how Goodman fi rst 

presents it:

  Let us speak of a work of art as  autographic  if and only if the distinction between 

original and forgery of it is signifi cant; or better, if and only if even the most exact 

duplication of it does not thereby count as genuine. If a work of art is autographic, we 

may also call that art autographic. Thus painting is autographic, music nonautographic, 

or  allographic . 

46

   

  42    

      Berys  Gaut,   ‘  “ Art ”   as  a  Cluster  Concept’,  in  Noël  Carroll  (ed.),   Theories of Art Today  (Madison, WI: University of 

Wisconsin Press, 2000), p. 26. If you do not think NOT-LITERATURE is a concept, then you may consider the 

possibility that a preponderance of image over text counts  against  an object falling under the concept LITERATURE.  

  43    

      See  Aaron  Meskin,   ‘ The  Cluster  Account  of  Art  Reconsidered ’ ,   British Journal of Aesthetics , vol. 47 (2007), pp. 

388 – 400.  

  44           Walton,   ‘ Categories  of  Art ’ ,  p.  339.  

  45    

      Nelson  Goodman,   Languages of Art  (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1976).  

  46            Ibid. , p. 113.  

 at University of Athens on June 19, 2011

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