Don’t judge a book by its cover

I have always loved comics books and not in the genre of capes and costumes. They don’t have to be, and nor do I enjoy superhero whimsy.

I have just finished reading “MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale” by Art Spiegelman. MAUS is a visceral account of life as a Polish Jew during the holocaust in Auschwitz. It is one of the most compelling books that I have read; written in the voice of Vladek (the author’s father) 30 years after the War. This piece of literature was the first time that a ‘comic book’ won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

The reason that I love and continue to read comic books as an adult is that when you find the right ones, they are all consuming.

If a picture paints a thousand words and the average comic book has 5 panels of artwork per page, that is 5,000 words on top of the written content per page… Over 100 pages, this adds up.

I of course do not read comic books exclusively. But I will always return to them as an alternative literary experience. I see this akin to interchanging between reading books and listening to audiobooks: a different yet equally valuable experience.

How is this relevant to coaching and high performance?

Arguably it’s not. But in a time when reading lists are often used as an intellectual flex, I encourage everyone to branch out and try reading something new and to enjoy the mastery and alternative reading experience of the graphic novel.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the following ‘comics’ to captivate, elucidate and challenge any reader from a moral, philosophical, or anthropological standpoint:

- The Complete Persepolis – by Marjane Satrapi.

- Blankets – by Craig Thompson.

- I Kill Giants – by Joe Kelly & Ken Nimura.

- The Sandman series – by Neil Gaiman (especially ‘Men of Good Fortune’).

- V for Vendetta – by Alan Moore.