Well, I must confess immediately that my derision of what I previously regarded as pandering to the intellectually challenged has undergone considerable revision.
I still believe that there is nothing to compare with the uplift of spirit that comes from reading a great piece of prose or poetry. But I now accept and acknowledge that there are other factors involved which may be satisfied by graphical material that words alone will not provide. And I think it is principally a question of interpretation. When I read a prose passage (and I am writing here about prose, because poetry has a totally different set of considerations when it comes to meaning or interpretation) my understanding of the meaning behind the words is based on my personal values, belief system, and representational system. If these run counter to those of the author, the possibility exists that what I understand the author to mean may not be what they intended. This is not to say that my understanding, my interpretation is unimportant or irrelevant, but that it simply differs from what the author had hoped to achieve.
By contrast, a graphic novel has a different interpretation, because the reader is now using the author's visual representational system, or that of the graphic artist which, in all likelihood, has been conveyed to the artist by the author. In NLP jargon, the graphic author is appealing to the Visual while the writer is appealing to the Auditory. This may surprise you, because in both cases the message is being conveyed via the eyes. But in reading words, the reader is interpreting them actually via the sounds they make in the inner ear.
So I, as the reader, am being fed a completely different message from viewing it as a picture, or a cartoon, or a manga. And this was brought home to me effectively and emotionally when I browsed When David Lost His Voice. I found it affected me on a totally different visceral level than I would have experienced had I simply read the written words. I did more than empathise; I identified. It was a profound experience.
So my approach to the graphic novel has changed. I shall no longer indulge in the hubris that formerly caused me to look down on those who prefer seeing pictures to reading words. If the aim of communication is the conveying of ideas, it is clearly more important that those ideas should reach the minds of others whether conveyed via the eye or the ear. And who am I to judge that one is worthier than the other?
A review of When David Lost His Voice will appear in the Book Review section in due course.