Look, I get why people want to gatekeep what counts as "high literature." But that just feels like snobbery dressed up as standards. Watchmen deals with moral ambiguity, trauma, and the nature of power better than half the novels I had to read in college. Maus literally won a Pulitzer. Are we really gonna say the Pulitzer committee got it wrong? Comics can do everything prose does — character development, theme, symbolism — plus they add visual storytelling. That's not a downgrade, that's more tools in the toolbox. Art Spiegelman wasn't writing "lesser" work because he drew mice instead of describing them. Gatekeeping literature by format is like saying movies aren't art because they're not paintings. It doesn't hold up.

You keep talking about potential, but let's talk about what's actually happening right now. Maus is taught in schools. Persepolis is on college syllabuses. Watchmen is in the Criterion Collection and analyzed in academic journals. That's not "maybe someday" — that's already here. I think you're hung up on the word "literature." You're picturing some exclusive club with a strict dress code. But literature is just writing that has artistic merit and cultural significance. Full stop. By that definition, plenty of comics clear the bar easily. And here's the thing — the visual element doesn't make it less literary. It makes it more layered. When Alan Moore uses panel layout to show time slowing down during a traumatic moment, that's not just drawing. That's storytelling craft that prose literally can't replicate.