Probably.

It would be shameful, though. As much as I like comics, they're not fucking literature.

Isn't is already like that today?

And those students will find that stuff boring for some reason.

>>2382929
lol i had maus as required reading.

>>2382935
what class?

Maus? Possibly

Not so sure about Watchmen, though

>>2382932
>Watchmen
>not fucking literature.

fuck off, please.

we watch Batman in spanish over and over, we don't sit down with a spanish book

I read Maus in school.

>>2382938
When I was in 6th grade I believe. Im a college freshman now. It wasn't until my junior year where my /lit/ professor assigned us "The Stranger", "The Metamorphosis", and "Paradise Lost" that I understood why lit rocks.

Love and Rockets is better.

>>2382929
Public Libraries all have graphic novel sections already.
>>2382956
meh

I didn't like the plot in watchmen. It might have had revolutionary themes for the time in context, but when I read it today all I see is a shitty plot

overrated

One of my philosophy teachers was a fan of comic books. He made us read excerpts from Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa.

It has already begun.

not bloody likely

One of my friends had Maus as required reading in school. I wound up reading it in high school when some classmate that was obsessed with Ralph Bakshi movies let me borrow their copy. A couple months ago I got to see a college presentation by Spiegelman about comics, which was pretty cool.

I can't really see Watchmen being required unless it was a course for graphic novels. Even then V For Vendetta would probably be assigned before it.

Comics have occasionally had some deeper meaning to them. Like Calvin & Hobbes always had the occasional philosophical segments. As a whole though, it was a comic, not literature.

if you need pictures to get your thoughts across ur doin it wrong

I think it's unfair to comics to treat them like literature. Comics operate rather differently.

They probably will, but not in the way the rest of the imbeciles in this thread think it's going to be (under the name of literature). It will be as sequential art.

>>2383002
>sequential art
I like that term.

>>2382962
>plotplotplotplotplotplotplotplotplot

be more of a philistine

>>2383002
pretty much.

I don't know about required. Catcher is a high school favorite because teens respond well to Holden and the book makes shit like motifs and themes easy to learn.

Those two you mentioned are being taught, though. I met someone once who had read Watchmen in Intro to Lit. And I read a Joe Sacco comic in a lit class. It really depends on the professor/teacher, their interests, etc. In 50 years I'd say that teachers will be much more open to including a comic where appropriate, but I'm not sure if any comics will become syllabus staples.

Like movies now. It's fairly common that literature courses will include a movie, though not everyone does this.

>>2382993

Not everyone can write prose. I guess your not aware that some people are visual while others are better with words. Get out of your high horse. Stupid literature gorks.

I don't know about that, but they should.

I think people often underestimate Watchmen over the risk of sounding pretentious. I don't think people even notice this, but there is a tendency to just let it go and call it off "ah, it's just a silly comic book" frightened by the fact of someone taking it seriously.

I really think Watchmen is one of the most incredible pieces ever composed in pictures and in literature. And people often misjudge them, for good and for bad. It's weird that people can understand when someone dislike a piece of art for the wrong reasons (like dismissing a movie because it's b&w or because it's a Hollywood summer movie or things like that), but people never considerate that it is possible to like something for the wrong reasons too. I think that Watchmen is a victim of that. Because it got a lot of recognition from everyone, the typical comic book fan who somehow missed it will read and probably like it, but he is accostumed by the tropes, the superhero thematic and the bright colors. they will like it because Dr Manhattan is as clever and as vague as they would like to be or they will think Ozymandias was right or they will enjoy the costume design and 9 panel formula. It's not about dismissing the plot, which is overall better than the usual comic book, but the whole fuzz about Watchmen revolves around other things and if you keep thinking people like it for the plot, it's easy to dismiss it and say it's nothing much. It can be read in a way that is more than just fantasy and plot, but on the form the books were written.

cont

>>2383072 cont.

And it was not just a shock at the time, but it is still shocking to read it today as I don't recall all that many sequential art books coming close to Watchmen in nature. Watchmen is about communication, it has meta in its very core and if people find the characters cool and edgy, they are missing the point in that all of them, including Manhattan and Ozymandias, are idiots. And so they all have strong opinions and take bold actions, all of them reassuring that they know what's going on, Rorschasch in his extremism, Ozymandias in his idea that in the end he had to be right, The Comedian doing his business thinking it was a joke and in the end, all of them broke down to pieces, even Ozymandias as seeing the very last scene of Watchmen. And it was in the idea that Sally didn't know much about her life as she thought she did, supressing her memories, twisting them like psychology usually show us we do, that made Dr Manhattan come back, fooling himself in that he could not be fooled by anyone, Ozymandias fooling himself that if he had it all in his head, he would know what is the best to do and could decide over the lives of others. And the Comedian desperately talking to Murdoch is the perfect example of how desperate all the characters were. And meanwhile, the most common down to Earth person out of them, Nightowl, with his common sense and naiveness had his revelation much earlier than the rest of the characters, he perceived his impotence and was able to visualize his own death in his dreams, death that is to come to all of them, but they don't act as if they will die.

cont.

>>2383077 cont.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg, it's not yet what makes Watchmen great, all of that are issues of the plot and the character development, which could have been adressed by any book or movie. But what is unique to Watchmen is that it uses visual and literary tools in a way that I personally never saw anywhere. Police reports, book inside the book, article, scientific essay, advertising, a comic book inside the comic book, a lunatic bum, a grafitti on the wall, epigraphs, dreams, psychologic analysis, flashback, religion, television, parody, anecdote, joke, investigation and spy story, getting old, politics, technology and the absurdity of a monster... All of these elements are there to tell us the story of these characters, of the current situation. And in doing so, they multiplied our means to interpret this story and incited some sort of wholeness, in politics and the social just as well as in the individual and on story telling itself. There is a Borgian idea of faking reality to it and show the absurd to let us in a state of shock, even though it's all layed out in front of us.

It goes beyond mere narrative, plot, story, writing. It's also not about images, like the powerful smiley stained with the coincidence of a blood drop. Sequential art is not a collection of those things and we need more people like Chris Ware or David Mazzuchelli to show everyone how the interaction between image and words are more important than the words and the images themselves in comic books. Much like what people call high literature is to be not about the plot or how clear one can describe an action, but how it's possible to manipulate our internal worlds with pure words!

cont.

>>2383081 cont.

And you can't translate things clearly, you can't make a movie for Watchmen or write Watchmen down or just appreciate the imagery without the words without losing something. If you read the script and then see the pictures, you are still missing it. And what I find incredible about Watchmen is that it comes to talk exactly about those things, on how we have the illusion that we can translate the world into a to-do list or a television show, or a joke. But also about how we are constantly doing it, transforming the current political situation into a perfume bottle, condensing an entire life into a bubble, a globe with fake snow, which in Citizen Kane had a relationship to the snow itself, and here it is again as an allusion to how tiny and yet meaningful our personal and internal world is.

Watchmen, Asterios Polyp, Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, Will Eisner, Winsor McCay... These guys should be studied out carefully, not by comic book fans, that put Watchmen next to their Kick-ass comic book. Neither to the high brow literats who are not accostumed to see images for what they really are and as symbols, and can't judge, but by those with the vision to see how intelligent these interactions can be and how useful are these tools.

>>2383072
>>2383077
>>2383081
>>2383082
Well done. Absolutely brilliant. I have not a bad word to say about your miniature essay.

Graphic novel:

A stupid term created for comic artists like Spiegelman to sell more comics.

>>2382947
He's right, though. Comics aren't literature. That's no slight to comics, they're just completely different things.

Watchmen being taught in school would be a good thing, I think.

personal opinion time: watchmen is visually grating, and only for people who want to appear "serious" about liking comic books or who read them fanatically already. Can be taught in niche courses.

From Hell on the other hand is fantastic a great work of historical fiction aided by appropriate style and topped off with indelible visuals. Deserves to be taught at a graduate level in serious classes.

for methods of critical analysis we used almost all graphic novels to learn formalism and marxist crit and post-colonial and all of those it was neat

that said watchmen is pretty mediocre

>>2383101
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Glass_%28comics%29

In my senior year in high school I took a film and fiction class. We read Watchmen and compared it to the film.

The english teacher was a huge comic book nerd, though. He loved all that stuff.

>>2383134
That's a cool graphic novel.

What's your point with this?

>>2383153
No wonder he compared to the film, how one can compare the two is above me. They are just nothing alike and the movie kept everything shallow and throw all there was to it out. It's a good way to see if people like Watchmen in a shallow way or not though.

>>2383165

>people still getting mad over Watchmen movie

>>2383171
Hey, I'm not mad.

>>2383171
he's not mad. he's just explaining how the Watchmen film is a shallow and pale imitation of the book.

>>2383177
>>2383187
he's the mad one, he obviously likes the movie.

>>2383187

The Ultimate Cut is alright.

we had to read maus in 10th grade...

>>2383194
You probably think the opening is awesome and intelligent...

>>2383204
>opening
>intelligent

Get lost, kid. You don't even know how to use words.

>>2383209
>uses patronising words to rebut the legitimately patronising slander against him.

try some originality, kiddo.

As a comic book weirdo I gotta say that neither Watchmen nor probably Maus would be among my first choices for a syllabus incorporating big-name canonical comics. I might put Maus on a reading list for a first-year interdisciplinary course but I'd prob be more likely to include Epileptic or even Persepolis, which IMO is more interesting and witty on a strictly literary level. I think Watchmen is largely lost on people who don't have a freakishly-strong handle on traditional superhero comics.

>In 50 years, students will be required to read material such as Maus and Watchmen as a part of school, much like 1984 and Catcher in the Rye are today.

maybe

>In 10 years, female novelists will poop out books that resonate with grown-up lady neckbeards the same way bestselling novels of 2002 did with male nerds with MFAs

probably! can't decide whether i want to be alive or dead in nuclear apocalypse when the Great American Yaoi Doujin Pastiche hits bookshelves

yes. but honestly it should be extra credit.

ernie pook's comeek < catcher

I read Maus because it was on the reading list when I was in high school. I can understand that it could be allowed because it's historical and has obvious metaphors. It was pretty meh.

I liked Watchmen, but no matter what literary devices it uses, no matter what drama, character development, symbolism, or satire it utilizes- it's still a fucking cape comic.

>>2383251
Missing the best panel

Schools in America have been systematically dumbed down over the past 50 years.

It wouldn't surprise me if future curriculum featured colouring books already coloured in.

>>2383305
In English.
Sciences are more advanced. Math is inbetween depending on the budget and effort of the school.

Nope, because graphic novels are more expensive than penguin classics.

>>2383331
Pretty sure you're wrong about that, America has been behind on teaching math and sciences for over a decade.

I already read those in uni

I can see Sandman being read in highschool English classes, not the whole thing though.

That happens already in some colleges. All the basic English courses at mine offer different classes with different focuses. So for instance, one was graphic novels. Scott Pilgrim was part of the required reading.

If you're talking about high school then I doubt it. Comics are more irrelevant than they've ever been these days.

Watchmen is somewhat over-rated by now. There are stronger comics out there, but few have had as much of a cultural impact. It's really the same way Catcher is considered a "masterpiece", unfortunately. It's annoying to hear it as a buzzword, or a qualifier for reading comics as "literature".

>>2383478
>Comics are more irrelevant than they've ever been these days.

no way. comics are much better and get way more mainstream press today than in say 1997

>>2383482
>get way more mainstream press today than in say 1997

Something tells me you know nothing of comics.

Comics today are lucky to sell over 30,000 copies.
Comics in the 90s sold millions.

I taught Watchmen last year.

a friend of mine who's currently earning his teaching certificate told me that there's more and more emphasis on visual learning now and in some schools they're using abridged "graphic novel" adaptations of canonized books. there's a company that publishes these, i forget the name, but they've got comic book versions of moby dick, don quixote, various shakespeare plays, etc... and they're being used in schools

>1984
>Catcher in the Rye

What fucking god-tier pinnacle of intellectualism did you go to? I was stuck with fucking Looking For Alibrandi and Lord of the Flies.

But anyway, I digress.

Watchmen, no. Maus, perhaps. They were too topical, and although they resonate slightly with current events, with each decade they become less and less relevant. I have little reason to suspect that The Great Gatsby and co won't still be as highly regarded in fifty years.

>>I taught Watchmen last year.

What was the class?

>>2383103
I agree that the art in Watchmen is inferior to the art in From Hell. Gibbons did a fine job and I'm sure is a reliable artist, but for the most part the art is workmanlike at best.
I don't agree that Watchmen is liked just by people that want to appear smart. It had its greatest impact on superhero comics fans in 1980s, because it refers to so many comics tropes and has deeper meaning for people who were living through the Cold War. It's harder to relate to now. From Hell is more timeless and has a broader appeal.
When I first read Watchmen (1989 or so) I didn't understand a lot of it because I wasn't a superhero comics fan. Nite Owl II? The first one retiring and another one taking the name? Wtf? I had no idea that that kind of thing went on all the time in superhero comics. I still liked it, but it took a while to understand everything that was going on under the surface.

>>2383072

Nice, but I'd like to add to that the fact that Watchmen is also a book about comics themselves, and the way in which they developed.

You have the original Nite Owl saying at one point something like "there was no way we could compete against mutants and supermen", deliberately referencing the transition from the Golden Age to the Silver Age of comics.

I haven't read the book in a while, and I'm not going to be so verbose, but I think if anyone wanted to study Watchmen from that perspective, there would be a lot of material. Alan Moore writes very dense, intertextual works, and he knows his stuff.

I wish they'd re-do the art on these classics though. It would be more convincing as a work of art if they could somehow redraw the whole thing without the deadlines and pressures of the funny book industry, with the original artists having a chance to really work on them.

The Invisibles, in particular, really suffers some shitty art throughout its run.

>>2383483
Yeah, the early 90s. I was way into comics as a kid in the late 90s - the industry was beyond fucked and nobody was making movies that pandered to comic book nerds the way they do today. I don't read comics anymore and would admittedly not be surprised if circulation numbers for Big Two books were lower today than they were then if for no other reason than because print in general is dying, but when I was a young'in you didn't have Alan Moore and Dan Clowes showing up on The Simpsons, you didn't see film adaptations of Oni Press comics, you didn't see Brian K. Vaughan types jumping from well-liked Vertigo comics to the writers' room of the most popular show on TV, you didn't have Lev Grossman talking up Alison Bechdel in Time, etc. etc.

First year course. I'll never do it again, actually. The option for final papers was on Watchmen or Importance of Being Earnest. Everyone who wrote on Watchmen did poorly. It's difficult to teach and to write about.

>>2383509
>movies that pandered to comic book nerds
You think they honestly make movies to pander to comic book nerds now?
>types jumping from comics to the writers' room of the most popular show on TV
Babylon 5 with JMS?
>if for no other reason than because print in general is dying
What, have books from the 90s stopped selling over 200x fewer too?

Has any comic book artist been in a Levi's commercial since the 90s like Liefeld?
Has the death of any comic book character paralleled Superman's?

>>2383072
One of the things too about Watchmen that needs to be studied is the visual aspect of it, Gibbons and Moore were really brilliant with how they arranged the whole thing. Shame that I lost a link to a website that had a bunch of mind blowing stuff they did with how they arranged the panels and whatnot.

>>2383509
>Movies that pandered to comic book nerds

Heh.

More like comics that pander to moviegoers. To be fair, there are still some intelligent ones around, but for about a year either side of a major movie release, that comic is going to be simple and as blatantly exposition-y as fuck.

>>2383273
It's interesting to go back to the original discussions (e.g. on Usenet) at the time that Watchmen was first being published. The common feeling at the time was that:
- Moore hates superhero comics
- Moore is trying to destroy superhero comics
- I can't see how anyone can ever take superhero comics seriously after this
etc. etc. It really was a kick in the pants to the superhero comics that were being published then. Moore has actually said that he expected it would lead to disenchantment with the genre. Actually, all it did was lead to a revitalized genre with more complex characters that were psychotic/distant/amoral/weak-willed/bitchy/what-have-you.

>>2383533
Are you talking about this?
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/faculty/andrews/AnnotatedWatchmenV2/

>>2383525
Liefeld's jeans commercial and the Death of Superman were both early-90s too. And I don't mean to say that the '00s wave of comic book movies are made entirely for the relatively tiny but furious hive of obsessive nerds (although I do think that studios are keeping an eye on internet fanboy culture in general), just that they Were Not Happening in the '90s. You couldn't go to Target and take your pick of 10 fake-vintage t-shirts printed with '70s Marvel cover art, either. Like, I saw the Spawn movie when I was a kid despite never reading the comics just because I thought it was awesome that they did a comic book movie outside of the Batman franchise. Shit, I was so desperate that I taped the Supergirl movie off of TNT.

>>2383553
Oh yeah, and perhaps most importantly the aisle in every Barnes & Noble where stinky Death Note-reading kids plop down on the floor for hours at a time definitely didn't exist in the late 90s. You'd get maybe half a shelving unit stocked with a bunch of random-ass DC and Marvel trades, a collection of Dark Horse Aliens comics, two copies of Watchmen, half the Sandman series, a couple of Spawn collections, maybe Ghost World, and that's it.

>>2383559
That's because local comic shops gave these sort of kids a place to hang out instead. Why do you think LCS's are so unprofitable and scarce now, but were everywhere in the 90s?

>that feel when /lit/ has better comic conversations than /co/.
what's going on here?

>>2383569
Welcome to anywhere but /co/.

>>2383569

But then again, fa/tg/uys have better discussions about books than /lit/ does.

And /k/ has surprisingly good history threads, sometimes.

4chan: funny old place.

maus was assigned reading when i was in high school.

san francisco artfag highschool that is

>>2383578
>fa/tg/uys have better discussions about books than /lit/ does.

What books do they discuss?

Watchmen and Maus don't belong in literature classes because they are not literature, period.

nb: I am not making any kind of value judgement about the comics. They just belong to a different medium and it's unfair on both to lump them together.

your wrong

In 50 years... We will all be 50 years closer to death and won't give a fuck. Actually now I don't give a fuck. Study what you want, just don't expect me to listen to your conclusions.

>>2385949
What the fuck is wrong with you?

I think the best way to look at Watchmen is to look at it like science fiction novel. Sci-Fi novels ask a question and try to answer it in a situation where the philosophical maxims can reasonably arise and conflict, like, "what would life really be like with robots everywhere?" Well, Watchmen asks "what would life be like if there were real vigilantes and supermen?" This is a breach from regular comics in that they assume society as it is for us, and just add heroes. In Watchmen, simple vigilantes do have an impact on society, in very profound ways.

As for whether it should be taught in schools, I don't really see why not. The characters' moralities are believable, it's themes are well thought out intellectual on at least a high school level, and kids might actually enjoy reading it. There are plenty of not great "classics" we read as illustrations of the time and it's philosophy, and I think Watchmen is a decent piece on the end of the Cold War era.

And anyone who says a "comic" can hold no literary merit for their time are just being asinine.

>>2382929
Maus is already required reading for a number of classes.

The watchmen, despite its literary worth, will never be assigned reading because it doesn't touch on any of the topics that required readings usually have to. For whatever worth it has, a student would be better off reading John Locke.

>>2383622
lol, sota or what?

>>2386064
>I think the best way to look at Watchmen is to look at it like science fiction novel. Sci-Fi novels ask a question and try to answer it in a situation where the philosophical maxims can reasonably arise and conflict, like, "what would life really be like with robots everywhere?" Well, Watchmen asks "what would life be like if there were real vigilantes and supermen?" This is a breach from regular comics in that they assume society as it is for us, and just add heroes. In Watchmen, simple vigilantes do have an impact on society, in very profound ways.

extremely limited as an understanding of science fiction & as an appreciation of watchmen. that's basically the starting point of watchmen, not at all a summation. i mean, you've basically just identified the premise in the most obvious way possible.

>And anyone who says a "comic" can hold no literary merit for their time are just being asinine.

true that, though

>>2383641

Mostly fantasy and sci-fi. Naturally enough when you consider the board, but I've also seen debates on other kinds of literature there as well.

>Stat the characters of Moby Dick for 3.5

That sort of thing.

I mean, Queequeg is obviously a CN Barbarian, but Ishmael is harder to find a class for.

>>2386074
I meant it in the context of why sci-fi is studied at all. When I was in school there was little-to-no sci-fi as required reading. We spent a lot of time discussing why a piece was "worthy" of study, and I just remember this being the usual justification.

In general yes, it's a rather lacking view.

>>2386070
Never read Locke. What are the parallels between him and Watchmen?

>yfw Calvin&Hobbes
>Calvin: Isn’t it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humour? When you think about it, it’s weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it’s funny. Don’t you think it’s odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?

>Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.

>Calvin: (after a long pause) I can’t tell if that’s funny or really scary.

Others deserve analysis more than Watchmen.

they actually read both of those in my high school english program
persepolis too

I read Watchmen as part of a university course on science fiction literature. The course consisted mostly of reading books and then having discussions on tangential topics in philosophy and science and whatever else came up, so it was a lot of fun.

I've seen comics being used as required reading for college courses, but I've also seen women's literature as required reading so I'm certain literature is just going through a dark ages at the moment.

It's not that comics are improving, but people are becoming worse readers. They require simper things, and what's simpler than a book filled with drawings to keep their attention?

>>2386273
Let's hear your analysis. That's my favourite comic. What was the disease about? Homosexuality?

>>2386295
>what's simpler than a book filled with drawings to keep their attention

You can't be that retarded

>>2386295

is correct. As evidence the reader is invited to look at a college entrance examination from 1869: http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/04/10/230222/could-you-pass-harvards-entrance-exam-from-1869

>>2382934
How would they find it boring? Gosh golly, I hope they don't. When I read Rorschach's speech, I've never been so traumatized as a youth:

"Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night. Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach. Does that answer your questions, Doctor?"

>>2386661
Holy shit the math sections are a walk in the fuckin' park.

>>2386661
This.
There was a survey in the late 70s of HARVARD students, most didn't know what an Oedipus complex was, or who Oedipus was, couldn't date the Russian revolution to within a decade and were generally uneducated. It can only have gotten worse.
Can /lit/ date the Russian revolution without using wikipedia or google or any other website>

Well I would do brilliantly in all parts save for in Greek and American geography. Latin is a piece of cake. Thank you parents for giving me an interest in languages. Also I'm taking Ancient Greek this semester so I'd do well in that too in a year.

>>2386685
October 1918 I believe.

Coincided with the end of WWI if my memory is correct.

>>2386690
1917 but you got within a year, only one got within a decade in that survey.

All proof everything is in decline and the world is going to shit.

>>2386685
1912 off the top of my head, but revolutions never have a specific date.

>>2386661
Have someone from 1869 take an exam from now. Why wouldn't he pass it?

>>2386295
am i the only one that finds a book easier to read than a "comic"?