A Thought on Comic Books

I was having a thought about comic books on my way to work today. See, one of my dream jobs would be to write comics. But I don't actually read comics anymore on a regular basis for two reasons. Comics are way too expensive for what you get and the plots move way too slowly. You get 32 pages and maybe as many sentences in an issue and can pay up to $2.75 per issue. There is too much focus on the graphics and not enough on the words. As a consequence comic book story lines move really slowly. It could take a year for a story arc to complete that might take you three hours to read. Dont get me wrong I think that graphics are an integral part of the medium, however, I don't think that one should outweigh the other. I'd be willing to bet that comic artists make way more money than comic writers.
Having said that, I think that comic books, as they have been mis-labeled for years, are one of the most exciting mediums in America. The merging of words and graphics allows the creators to do so much in terms of storytelling. Think about how comics have come full circle. When Stan Lee took over the reins at Marvel, he demanded that comics be grapically exciting, more like movies than a comic strip. He wanted the images to use angles and perspectives that portrayed movement. So exciting were the images created between say 1965 and 2000 that the movies are just now catching up and learning how to make good "Comic Book Movies". In fact, film directors are now attempting to make movies more like comics; holding static images for short periods of time to emphasize the image (think of Goodfellas with the stills or The Matrix with bullet time as a few examples.)
Unfortunately, comic creators themselves don't seem to be taking the medium seriously, still thinking of themselves as producing collector's items and focusing on quantity rather than quality. The serial nature of comics is a marketing tool as much as it is anything else.
With the advent of the Graphic Novel comics are heading in the right direction but we're still very limited in what gets produced, mostly superhero comics targeted at teens.
I envision large numbers of graphic novels being produced every year. Fiction that covers as many genres as the standard novel. With attention paid to writers and artists that compliment each other's work. I imagine graphic novels that are 200 pages long and that you can beat up and bend the cover of, and pass around to your friends just like you would a standard novel. The images don't have to be spectacular, they have to be good and they have to portray emotion, atmosphere, and a sense of movement. But the words and the stories have to be great. The best graphic novel ever produced, I think, is Batman: Year One by Miller and Mazucelli(Hope I spelled that right) The graphics aren't as detailed as say a Jim Lee comic but they are atmospheric as hell. And the story is at once a Love story, a hero story, and a noir detective story. I think the medium needs to move more in this direction if it wants to be taken seriously in the literary world.