SOURCE: "Deconstructive Comics," in Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 25, No. 4, Spring, 1992, pp. 153-61.

In the following essay, Schmitt analyzes comic books as a mixed medium of word balloons and illustrations, and discusses their relationship to linguistic development.

Comic books have been and continue to be one of the most marginalized of art forms. The assumption that the "reading" of comics is a frivolous and inferior activity seems a given even among those who do not see them as a threat. But in fact, those conservative educators who do see the effects of comic books as a threat are probably more correct in their assumptions than those who dismiss this very influential and powerful art medium of the 20th century as frivolous. The effects of comic books on youngsters are quite subversive but not in the moral, behavioral sense which conservative educators perceive but rather in their effects on...