I've always loved comics, graphic novels, manga so to me it's rather natural to view these things as something with layers of meaning, a medium with the potential for expressing difficult subjects, and a 'legitimate' form of story telling.
While it was never my parents who shook their heads at my reading material I did get playfully teased my friends, coworkers, and even former relationship partners. One former significant other simply could not understand the notion that 'simple childhood comics' could deal with more adult subjects. I bought him a copy of Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers to prove a point and because I enjoyed that bit of work and wanted to share it. We'll be reading Maus but I was happy to see In the Shadow of No Towers referenced in the introduction of The Jewish Graphic Novel - Critical Approaches [xxi] as another example of the medium being used in a way that's not aimed at children.
This assumption that 'comics are for kids... and only for kids' is still pretty prevalent. As much as I enjoy NPR, columnist David Lipsky indulged in this assumption pretty heavily even today during a review of Runaways. The refrain "I like it but I feel guilty for liking it because it's kid's stuff" gets old fast.
I'm looking forward to the class because I feel that this is medium that gets shuffled aside a bit and examining it with a specific topic in mind, the Jewish experience by Jewish authors in this case, will be challenging and give my reading a better focus.
I agree it is odd how many people disregard comics as having no value but then flock in hordes to see the movies made from them. Even better is how afterwards they are shocked if they find out that it was based on a comic book!
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