Rumble Between the Panels: Canada Reads and Essex County

If you're Canadian and care about comic books, you might have heard: A graphic novel was one of the Canada Reads nominees this year, then was knocked off by the panel on the very first day. And although Essex County still won the People's Choice award, the way the book was treated on air has caused some consternation among comic books fans.

Then again, if there is one group of people known to consternate to the extreme, it's comic book nerds. A certain amount of distemper is to be expected. What is fascinating, though, is how mainstream the debate has come. In a panel printed in the (shudder) National Post, writer Darwyn Cooke gets testy when describing this year's judges:

"There was a British interior designer, an ex-pat CNN talking head, a Native Canadian fifth billed sitcom star, a pop singer/songwriter and so on*. It seems obvious the CBC was more interested in making the group seem like whatever Canadians call a hip celebrity jury than recruiting relevant or critical thinkers."

Cooke and the other panelists (store manager Christopher Butcher and journalist/critic Jeet Heer) shouldn't rend their garments just yet, though. Getting to read this kind of comic book talk in a national newspaper shows that graphic novels are, at least fitfully, seen as something more than raw material for Hollywood blockbusters.

Perhaps denying Essex County the big award is better for graphic novels than slapping that 'winner' sticker on the cover. A win can be seen as an anomaly, barely mentioned and forgotten after a year. Cooke mentions in passing that Fun Home was Time's Book of the Year in 2006, but I doubt that many Time subscribers have picked up a graphic novel since then. By inciting a debate that's picked up by popular media, Canada Reads might have just proven, in spite of itself, that graphic novels are as interesting and valuable as their prose-only relatives.

Tomorrow: I pick up on a Jeet Heer comment from that same article to discuss the "electability" of various other Canadian graphic novels. For the rest of tonight: I go to a concert.

*As my co-worker rightly noted, Cooke left out "energy drink-shilling, Haitian-Canadian hockey pugilist and Green Party member." Or maybe Cooke realized that George Laraque's credentials made him seem kind of righteous.