Slashdot linked up this extra-snarky NYT Magazine article describing the rise of the graphic novel as a form of "serious" literature. Contains wonderful bon-mots like this:

Comic books are what novels used to be -- an accessible, vernacular form with mass appeal -- and if the highbrows are right, they're a form perfectly suited to our dumbed-down culture and collective attention deficit.

Which, along with the rest, is among the better examples of affirming the consequent I've seen in a long time.

The rise of the graphic novel is not some sort of dystopian signpost of the crumbling of western civilization, it is instead yet another indicator of the rising wealth of people under 35, in all industrial cultures.

The left may believe it's axiomatic that "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer", but this is only because they choose to see what they want to see. Wealth is not a zero-sum game, it is created. The pizza of wealth is not cut into different sized slices, it grows larger, and the slices grow with it.

One of those slices belongs to people under 35, who are in real terms far wealthier than their parents were at the same age, let alone their grandparents or great grandparents. In a free market, goods and services follow the preferences of whomever happens to have enough dollars to spend, and the youth of today have a great deal to spend indeed.

Comics and graphic novels are being taken seriously not because they're "suddenly" a lot better. As anyone who grew up in the 70s can attest, comics were exploring sophisticated narratives with adult "situations" long before publishers like Dark Horse ever opened their doors. The Watchmen was a culmination, not an innovation. Comics and graphic novels are today being taken seriously because for the first time serious money is being made off of them.

The rise in quality is also no accident. For perhaps the first time, a market that has always appreciated quality and sophistication now has enough money to spend to attract it. Furthermore, a growing market will always provide far more opportunity than a static one, and comics and graphic novels are growing very fast indeed.

This is a culture that is quite patently not "dumbing down", but is instead exploring new themes and new ideas using a medium older than both film and television in which to do it. The perceived “dumbness” so often decried from the tops of various chattering ivory towers is far more about what a very small group of people think we all should listen to, read, or watch, instead of what we simply want to listen to, read, or watch. What they are incapable of understanding is this is a culture and a generation that simply has better things to do than reading very long stories about very small changes in very small people just because their elders tell them they should.