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I’ve never understood why some people look down on comic books.

There’s a strange assumption that reading a novel is somehow more intellectually respectable than reading a comic. As though the presence of pictures automatically makes a story less sophisticated.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Some of the best stories I’ve ever read were comic books.

And I’m not talking about stories I enjoyed as a kid simply because they had superheroes punching each other. I’m talking about stories that explored complicated ideas about morality, human nature, power, desire and the meaning of existence.

Stories I’ve thought about for decades.

I’ve read plenty of novels that left less of an impression on me.

So why do we treat comics as something readers are supposed to grow out of?

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What does it mean to want something?

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Take Marvel’s original Secret Wars and its sequel, Secret Wars II, from the 1980s.

On the surface, you’ve got superheroes, supervillains, cosmic battles and some pretty spectacular artwork.

Nothing wrong with any of that.

But underneath it is one of the more interesting philosophical concepts I’ve encountered in fiction.

The Beyonder.

In those original stories, imagine an omnipotent being who exists alone in his own universe.

He’s everything. There is nothing outside himself. No other beings, no competing desires, no sense of incompleteness.

Then he discovers our universe.

And he encounters something he doesn’t understand.

Desire.

Human beings spend their entire lives wanting things.

We want love, money, companionship, recognition, happiness, power, security. We want things we don’t have, and when we get them, we often find something else to want.

But to an entity who has always been everything, the very idea of wanting something is incomprehensible.

How can you want what you don’t have when you’ve never experienced not having something?

In the original Secret Wars, the Beyonder brings Earth’s heroes and villains together, partly to investigate the nature of desire.

In Secret Wars II, he takes the experiment further.

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He comes to Earth and attempts to experience human existence himself.

He takes human form. He tries to understand relationships, ambition, pleasure and the things that motivate us.

But there’s a fundamental problem.

He still possesses the power of a god.

How can an omnipotent being genuinely understand what it means to be human when he can simply change reality whenever he wants?

If he can have anything, can he ever truly experience longing?

If he can eliminate every consequence, can he ever understand fear?

And here’s the question that fascinates me most.

If God exists, can an all-powerful being truly understand the experience of his own creation?

That’s a pretty extraordinary philosophical question for a superhero comic.

And it doesn’t end there.

The Beyonder ultimately attempts to become mortal. After his apparent death, his released power gives rise to an entirely new universe, filled with the life and possibility he’d spent so long trying to understand.

There’s something almost poetic about that ending.

The being who couldn’t understand desire ultimately creates a universe of beings who will spend their lives experiencing it.

Now here’s something I’ve often wondered.

Suppose I described this story to someone who’d never read the comics. I told them about an omnipotent being grappling with the nature of desire, the limitations of godlike power and the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

And then I told them it was a science-fiction story by Isaac Asimov.

I suspect plenty of people would believe me.

They might even think it sounded like a profound exploration of existence and human nature.

But tell them the same ideas came from a Marvel comic book featuring superheroes in colourful costumes, and suddenly they might not seem quite so impressive.

Why?

The ideas haven’t changed. Only the name on the cover has.

Who watches the Watchmen?

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Then there’s Watchmen.

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons took the superhero concept and turned it inside out.

What would superheroes actually look like in the real world?

Who would hold them accountable?

What happens when extraordinarily powerful people decide they know what’s best for everyone else?

And how much freedom should society sacrifice in exchange for security?

At the centre of the story is Ozymandias, a man who decides that humanity can only be saved through an act of almost unimaginable evil.

He engineers a catastrophic attack, making it appear that Earth faces an extraterrestrial threat. His reasoning is that a common enemy might unite nations that are otherwise moving toward nuclear war.

Millions can die so that billions might live.

Is that justifiable?

Does an outcome become morally acceptable because the person responsible believes it will produce a greater good?

And who gets to make that decision for the rest of humanity?

It’s a story about power, morality, government, freedom and the terrifying consequences of one person deciding that the ends justify the means.

There are no easy answers.

That’s what makes it great.

Would these questions be considered more sophisticated if they were presented in a 600-page novel without illustrations?

I don’t see why they should be.

The world ends. The story begins.

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Or consider Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, illustrated by Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard.

Forget the television series for a moment. I’m talking about the original comics.

Yes, there are zombies.

Lots of zombies.

But that’s not really what makes the story compelling.

The interesting part is what happens to people when every institution they’ve relied upon disappears.

No police. No courts. No functioning government. No dependable rules.

Society collapses, and ordinary people are suddenly forced to make decisions they would never have imagined making before.

What happens to morality when survival is at stake?

How much of our behaviour comes from our own principles, and how much comes from living in a society that enforces certain rules?

How far would you go to protect the people you love?

It’s a fascinating experiment in human psychology and sociology disguised as a zombie apocalypse.

And the artwork isn’t incidental.

The bleak, black-and-white illustrations make that world feel harsh and unforgiving in a way that complements the storytelling.

The same is true of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, with inks by Klaus Janson and colours by Lynn Varley.

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Batman is no longer simply a heroic figure fighting criminals. He’s an aging, obsessive man living in a society that has changed around him.

The story asks uncomfortable questions about vigilantism, authority, violence and the difference between being a hero and believing you’re one.

These stories aren’t intellectually shallow because they’re illustrated.

The illustrations are part of how they achieve their effect.

I met Stan Lee once

Years ago, I had the privilege of meeting Stan Lee at a comic convention in Phoenix.

I shook his hand and thanked him for the wonderful stories that had been such a big part of my youth.

He signed a Spider-Man comic and a Fantastic Four comic for me.

They’re still among my most prized possessions.

And I think about the extraordinary cultural impact of something he helped create.

Consider Spider-Man’s most famous lesson:

With great power comes great responsibility.

It’s become so familiar that when I type it into my phone, the predictive text practically finishes the sentence for me.

That’s how deeply the idea has entered popular culture.

And what an important lesson it is.

Power isn’t simply something to enjoy. It comes with obligations. What we’re capable of doing matters less than what we choose to do with that ability.

You could build an entire philosophy lesson around that idea.

Instead, generations of young readers encountered it through a teenager in a colourful costume swinging between buildings.

And perhaps that’s exactly why it stayed with them.

They weren’t sitting down to study moral philosophy.

They were reading Spider-Man.

If we want kids to read, why are we so particular about what counts?

This brings me to something else that bothers me.

We’re constantly worried that children aren’t reading enough.

We complain about phones, social media, short attention spans and the difficulty of getting kids interested in books.

And then sometimes we dismiss the very kinds of stories that might get them reading.

Comic books and graphic novels can be an extraordinary entry point.

The combination of artwork and dialogue makes stories approachable without requiring them to be simplistic.

A reluctant reader can discover characters they care about, follow a complicated plot and develop the habit of wanting to know what happens next.

That’s reading.

And it matters.

The UK’s National Literacy Trust found that in 2026, nearly half (45.7%) of children and young people surveyed read comics or graphic novels in their free time at least once a month.

There’s clearly an appetite for them.

And if a child becomes absorbed in a comic book, why would we want to discourage that?

Maybe they’ll eventually move on to Tolkien, Steinbeck or Dostoyevsky.

Maybe they won’t.

Maybe they’ll keep reading graphic novels.

What’s wrong with that?

The goal should be to help people discover the pleasure of reading, not to convince them that only certain forms of reading count.

Great stories don’t need our permission

I love novels.

I love what a gifted writer can accomplish with nothing more than words on a page.

But I also love what happens when a gifted writer and artist combine their abilities to tell a story neither could tell quite the same way alone.

A novel allows us to imagine the world.

A comic gives us an artist’s interpretation of that world, while still leaving plenty of room for our own imagination.

The pauses between panels, the expressions on characters’ faces, the composition of a page, the things that are shown and the things deliberately left unseen all become part of the storytelling.

That’s an art form in its own right.

And I think we’re doing ourselves a disservice when we treat it as something less.

Some of the most interesting questions I’ve ever encountered in fiction came from comic books.

What does it mean to want something?

Can a terrible act ever be justified by a greater good?

What happens to morality when society collapses?

What responsibilities come with power?

I first encountered questions like these while turning the pages of stories filled with superheroes, cosmic beings, masked vigilantes and the walking dead.

Decades later, I’m still thinking about them.

So the next time someone tells you comic books aren’t real literature, I’d suggest asking them a simple question.

Have you actually read any?

Comics mentioned

This article contains Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

These collected editions contain the original stories discussed above. These are adult reading references; several include mature themes and violence.

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