"Comics Don't Count as Reading!"

Hello again.

I was at the mall the other day and started wondering why the Comic Book store was on one side of the mall while the Book Store was on the other.
My brother and I use to tease that it was because they wanted to keep the book readers away from the comic readers.

I've heard lots of people say, "I read all the time."
And then someone else ask, "What do you read?"
"I read comic books all the time."
"That's not reading..."

I some times wonder if there's any truth in the statement that comic book readers don't read.
Of course with comics you do have the problem that they're very short and that your imagination is left collecting dust while you look at the pictures on the page. I'm not going to side step around those facts, but that doesn't mean that comics don't count as reading at all.
Comic books may be "easier" to read, but they can some times have just as much heart as a good book.

I was reading a one shot comic about a week ago (for those new to comics, One Shots are comics that only get about 4 issues), and it had a villain that had been driven to her evil ways by her father's decision to set her loose in the world to fend for herself so that she wouldn't be spoiled by her inherited powers.
She ended up wanting to prove to her father that she wasn't spoiled and that she had the power to take care of herself. She ended up being a bully, but was still a young girl wanting to come home at heart.
The heroine of the story confronts this poor villain on behalf of her father, but the villain is only angered and attack the hero and her friends. Our hero shows the villain that not everyone is afraid of her and she becomes frightened and backs off. The hero brings the former villain back to her father who begs his daughter's forgiveness. There is a tearful reunion and the hero find that in confronting the villain to help her friends, she found the confidants she needed to be the hero everyone knew she could be.

And all that was in just one issue! So you can't just say that comic books are books at all. Because what are books if not a way to tell a story that has real emotion?

I'm not saying that books and comics should be held in the same esteem.
I'm in the middle of reading Shadow of the Bear, Hamlet, the Princess Bride, and as soon as I'm done reading Hamlet I plan to re-read the Shakespeare Stealer, Shakespeare's Scribe, and read the sequel I just got to those two books, the Shakespeare Spy.

"(Gasp) She actually reads more than just comic books!"
Yes, I do and as much as I love comic books, none of them will ever match up to Shakespeare's writing. I'm not saying that at all. All I'm saying is that comic books are very capable of being good heartfelt stories.

It's late and I need to get to bed now. Thanks for listening.