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Graphic novels have often been characterized as the public’s choice for easy, informal reading and nothing more. Despite this disparaging reputation, the graphic novel, in its many-faceted narrative, seeks to explore the evolving dialogues and conditions of our society. Examples include Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, The Boondocks: “Because I Know You Don’t Read the Newspaper” by Aaron McGruder, and American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, all of which bring very different issues to the forefront: wartime and the hero complex, racial issues, and the individual’s struggles with identity. Although different in their emphases, these novels, like other graphic texts, help present and promote social dialogue and a wider public understanding of the complex issues that are imbedded in our social fabric. These multifaceted graphic depictions are also important to clarify an otherwise often complex political landscape that affects American culture every day. 

 “Beheaded by an elf-man, for empty pride!” With these words, wary onlookers watch as Sir Gawain valiantly searches for the mysterious “Knight of  the Green Chapel” so that the latter can return the blow in a “beheading game.” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shares the basic quest structure of earlier Arthurian Romances; however, by the time of its late 14th century debut, medieval European readers were no longer enchanted by a code of chivalry that came across as unattainable and artificial. In this context, the Pearl Poet’s characters are aware that Sir Gawain’s “quest” to validate his sense of worth is a   purely performative act of ritual and play. This awareness serves to satirize the   traditional chivalric code and to emphasize the growing social dissatisfaction with its outmoded conventions. Gawain’s journey to the Green Chapel is not marked with descriptions of heroic adventures he has along the way. Instead, the Pearl Poet condenses Gawain’s exploits into a few lines and focuses instead on the passage of time, the cycle of exchange, and the changing of appearance. His manipulation of time and place reveals Gawain’s seemingly straightforward “quest” as a highly stylized series of rituals that highlight his chivalry as a temporal and ultimately scripted illusion concocted by the infamous shapeshifter, Morgan le Fay. The poet wanted not only to break away from the common chivalric-laden conventions of traditional Arthurian quest tales, but to also tear the veil from the text’s structure and reveal who was really telling the story.

Though relegated to the children’s section of bookstores, the Harry Potter series incorporates traditional classical elements. The epic hero, particularly, stimulates the interest of young readers in mature traditions and therefore (or at least arguably) calls for the inclusion of the series in a “more advanced” literary canon. Even as the hero has undergone significant changes, it has maintained its elevated position, and many characteristics of the classical heroes in the Iliad and the Odyssey remain obvious in today’s popular “modern heroes.” That’s as true of the hero Harry Potter as it is of others. If we want, however, a definition for a “modern” epic hero, we can find one in the differences that separate Potter from the traditional epic hero. For although Potter fits within Joseph Campbell’s conventional descriptions of the hero (who goes on a journey to fix problems in his society), he is pointedly different than the typical kingly hero of the traditional epic. His differences generate sympathy with younger readers. They also identify important changes that help define the modern epic hero—his orphan status, his underprivileged background, and his vulnerability to the overpowering political structures that surround him. While this patchwork hero was created in the tradition of ancient tales and many of his heroic qualities match those catalogued by Campbell, the incorporation of the attributes of the “modern” hero assures that Potter will continue to invite the attention of young students and, hopefully, of more mature audiences as well. 

The recent terrorist attacks have perhaps given us a somewhat clearer understanding of the catastrophic effects of war. This realization was brought home to me when I lived in Paris at the time of the shocking and devastating  November 2015 attacks in that city. People sought out communal contact to share common emotions, conversations, and assurances about their collective humanity. This atmosphere brought to mind the expatriate writers who congregated in Paris following WWI. Participating in the widespread response to its unsettling aftermath, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and others formed an interconnected community based on the mutual need to share their reactions to the tragedies of war and the demands of change. They did this by writing—and by distributing their work to each other and to the public at large through the generous support of people like Sylvia Beach. Her bookstore became a cohesive force for the vibrant mixture of publishers, poets, and artists whose work helps identify the specifics of the community’s interests.  A study of Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast does this intimately, revealing not only these specifics, but also the ways in which the need for change—for reforming, reformulating, and reconstructing, helped create strong underlying bonds in the literary “lost generation.”

In many dystopian novels, the characters are citizens who follow the bizarre rules, laws, and expectations of some corrupt authoritarian “government.” Most of these citizens, having been brainwashed into accepting a variety of social injustices, have become desensitized to the reality of their circumstances. Three dystopian texts--Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993), and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (2008)--will serve as examples for how readily this desensitization can occur and how blind the fictional citizens are to their unsatisfactory conditions. Huxley’s citizens are desensitized by genetic manipulation and modified educational programming, Lowry’s characters become desensitized when their memories are eliminated, and Collins’s citizens are desensitized by the propaganda embedded into their history and education. Within these dystopian worlds, all three authors portray a significant character, a “whistle blower,” who informs or tries to inform the citizens that they have been desensitized. As these three novels progress from the fantastic world of Huxley’s Brave New World to the more realistic worlds of Lowry’s The Giver and Collins’s The Hunger Games, their fictional citizens also progress toward an increased awareness of their undesirable conditions. This awareness, arguably, is meant to alert readers to the desensitizing forces and various flaws in their own societies. 

Low cost and easily accessible electronic texts have been a major challenge to the print publishing industry, especially in the past five years. Exacerbated by rising production costs, the industry’s problems have forced it into a transition stage that requires major revamping in the context of its ever more intrusive competition--digitalization. It’s true that in some cases the demand for print materials has not declined but merely changed. Yet as print book sales have weakened for many publishers, the industry has needed to take some cues from its competition. Research indicates that print publishers are beginning to provide more interactive content, to engage new audiences in more imaginative ways, and to create and embrace any innovation that promises to keep the business thriving. The industry’s overall plan has been to switch from concentrating on marketing strategies to focusing on consumer-integrating strategies. At the same time, the industry is recognizing the value of adhering to some of its own traditional characteristics and procedures. Capitalizing on that value should mean that print publishing will remain alive and well—especially in an Information Age that is continuously producing unprecedented quantities of high-quality content, some of which is essential to specific audiences, and much of which needs to be distributed by print publishers.