“If a comic can serve as the mediating mask of tragedy, that might help explain why graphic novels are proving so successful in depicting not only torture and war but illness, domestic conflict, even teenage trauma—anything hard to face in the raw. Comics can morph directly from realism to expressionist fantasy—from a prison cell or hospital bed, to the turmoil inside someone’s head.”
The Daily Beast takes a closer look at the “explosion” of graphic novels, evolving critical opinions on the medium, and a growing acknowledgment of “comics’ twin potential for art and activism.”