What I want so badly for comics readers is for them to have confidence enough in the value of their favorite medium that they 1) don't feel the need to prove that value by trying to shoehorn into it the language-sense that describes another medium, and…

2) don't get bothered when someone whose focus is an entirely different medium doesn't see that value. (When your literary bookclub hears Dennis Hopper only thinks of novels in terms of mining IP,* they probably aren't that broken up over it.)

*This is a made up example.

Comics readers: you love a truly great narrative artform that is every bit as wonderful as prose literature and film. Maybe even more wonderful? You don't need to argue that comics are a good gateway into another medium. That only presupposes the superiority of the other medium.

You don't need to argue that reading prose literature is the same as reading comics. They're two totally different mediums, so of course reading comics and reading novels is going to describe two different activities.

One of the foundational wonders of comics is that it *isn't* reading in the sense that novels is reading. That they are *not* reading in the same sense is comics' strength. Don't forfeit that strength because you don't have confidence in comics' value.

Look. I get it. Recently developed narrative mediums take a while to earn widespread respect, so it can feel like a rhetorical shortcut to compare it to established mediums—but that just leaves your new medium to exist principally in the shadow of the established medium.

When you argue that comics are valuable because they turn people into novel readers, you're accidentally saying that That is what's valuable about comics—when really, if it's even true, it's accidental. And when comics fail to turn kids into readers, comics then lose their value.

Comics are Good.

Believe that.

And then teach yourself to explain why. This will give you confidence in the medium and that confidence will evangelize the outsiders. That confidence and your ability to elucidate it is your best tool to proselytizing the unconvinced.

(I also get it that it can be hard to feel confident when, at least in the US, the dominant discourse in comics revolves around a single niche subgenre that is foundationally aimed at young readers—regardless of how "mature" that subgenre's individual iterations might be.)

(This thread could also go to the Videogames Are Art crowd. Instead of holding out for Art, just have confidence that videogames are Good and powerful and what they can do is unique, impressive, and worthwhile. Who cares if they're art if they are Important and Valuable.)