Work Text:
Thirteen years after Hatchards
Aziraphale was marking papers in his study when he came across a particularly thoughtful analysis comparing Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway to something called Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
He stared at the essay. Read it again. The student was making sophisticated arguments about narrative structure, memory, and queer identity – but half the citations were to a... graphic novel?
He stood up to look for his husband.
"Crowley? Do you know any graphic novels for adults?"
"Comic books that think they are Literature with a capital L? Not really. Why?"
"A student just wrote a brilliant essay comparing Woolf to something called Fun Home. By someone named Bechdel. It's apparently a graphic memoir about –" he checked the essay, "– her complicated relationship with her closeted gay father and her own coming out."
"Alison Bechdel. Yeah, I’ve heard of it. It’s supposed to be excellent. Never read it though."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm a snob who thinks books for adults shouldn't have pictures unless they're called 'illustrations' or 'illuminations' and cost £300?"
"We spent weeks reading children's books. With pictures."
"That's different. Those were for children. We were being educational and curious."
"And now I'm curious about graphic novels for adults."
"You want to read comic books."
"I want to understand a medium my students are taking seriously enough to compare to Virginia Woolf."
Crowley was quiet for a moment. "Alright. I know of a few. Maus by Art Spiegelman. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Those are really famous ones. The ones even literary snobs admit are good."
"Just those two?"
"I'm sure there are more. But I don't know them. We'd have to – research."
"Research with you? Always." Aziraphale said, warming to the idea.
"Fine. Let’s start with Maus. If we're doing this, we're going in with the big guns. Holocaust memoir in animal form. Nothing says 'legitimate literature' like intergenerational trauma."
Saturday afternoon, they sat in their living room with the two volumes of Maus – black covers, stark imagery.
"Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs," Crowley explained, opening the first volume. "Spiegelman is interviewing his father about surviving Auschwitz. But he's also writing about their difficult relationship, about guilt, about the impossibility of representing the Holocaust."
"Why animals?" Aziraphale asked.
"Because humans can't bear the horror. The animal metaphor creates distance – lets you see the pain without being completely destroyed by it. Also, it references Nazi propaganda that depicted Jews as vermin. Spiegelman reclaims it. Very metal."
"Did you just describe Holocaust representation as 'very metal'?"
"I'm easing into my graphic novel analysis vocabulary. Give me time."
They read in silence for an hour. The story was devastating – Vladek Spiegelman's survival, his losses, his difficult personality in old age, Art's struggle to tell the story without exploiting his father's trauma.
"This is extraordinary," Aziraphale said, halfway through the first volume. "Look at this panel – Art drawing himself at his desk, wearing a mouse mask, surrounded by corpses. He's showing you the impossibility of what he's doing. Making art about the Holocaust. The guilt of it."
"And look how he draws his father," Crowley added. "These tiny panels of Vladek being difficult, being cheap, being racist about Black people. Spiegelman doesn't make him a saint. Surviving the Holocaust doesn't make you perfect. That's painfully honest."
They finished both volumes by evening, both of them quiet, both processing.
"It's definitely literature," Aziraphale said finally. "But it’s using the medium to do something prose couldn't. The animal metaphor, the nested narratives, the metafictional elements – you couldn't do that in a regular memoir."
"Sequential art," Crowley said. "That's what serious people call it. Not comics. Sequential art."
"That sounds like something people say when they're embarrassed to admit they're reading comics."
"It absolutely is. But it's also very accurate."
Persepolis was different from Maus – simpler art, more cartoony, black and white and stark.
"Satrapi grew up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution," Crowley explained. "Secular family, progressive politics, then suddenly the fundamentalists take over. She goes from wearing Western clothes to forced veiling, from progressive school to religious indoctrination."
"And she draws it simply," Aziraphale observed. "Almost childlike. But look – " he pointed to a panel of young Marjane imagining herself as a prophet, " – she's showing you her child self's imagination. Her grandiosity. Her confusion."
They read together on the sofa, occasionally reading panels aloud, both absorbed.
"This is what graphic novels can do," Crowley said, showing a page. "Look – Marjane's mother photographed at a demonstration. Then the same image printed in newspapers around the world. Satrapi shows you the danger – if the government identifies her mother from this photo, she could be killed. The visual medium makes that immediate."
By the end – Satrapi returning to Iran, leaving again, the cost of being between cultures – both of them were emotional.
"Two for two," Aziraphale admitted. "Both brilliant. Both doing things prose couldn't. What next?"
"I don't know. These are the only two I know are definitely good."
"So, we research. Properly. We find the graphic novels that matter."
"You're really into this."
"I'm into understanding why my students are taking this seriously. And –" Aziraphale hesitated, "– I'm into learning something new with you. I’m into you, when you’re enthusiastic."
"That's disgustingly romantic. And inexplicably sexy."
"You're blushing."
"I'm not. I'm flushed from intellectual excitement."
"Of course you are, dear."
Crowley asked Newton at their regular Friday dinner.
"Graphic novels for adults?" Newton looked up from his book. "Why?"
"Aziraphale wants to learn about them. We've read Maus and Persepolis. What else is good?"
"No idea. Not really my area." Newton thought. "Ask Anathema. She reads everything, including the backs of cereal boxes."
Anathema, when asked, had opinions. Many opinions.
"Oh! Yes! You need Fun Home by Alison Bechdel – that's the lesbian literary one. Watchmen by Alan Moore if you want dark superhero deconstruction. From Hell, also by Alan Moore, if you want Jack the Ripper and Masonic conspiracy theories and Alan Moore being extremely Alan Moore about Victorians and prostitutes."
"That's a lot of Alan Moore," Crowley observed.
"He's mad and brilliant and probably thinks he's a wizard. You'll either love him or want to throw the book across the room. No middle ground. I love him." Anathema kept going. "Oh! And Logicomix about Bertrand Russell and the foundations of mathematics. And Habibi by Craig Thompson."
"I need to write these down," Crowley said, pulling out his phone. "You're just naming every graphic novel ever published."
"I'm only naming the good ones!"
Aziraphale asked Tracy at a department party.
"Adult graphic novels? God yes. Fun Home obviously. Stitches by David Small. Blankets by Craig Thompson – though it's a bit evangelical Christian which might put you off. My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris – absolutely extraordinary, drawn to look like a kid's monster notebook but it's about queer identity and 1960s Chicago."
"Why have I never heard of these?" Aziraphale asked.
"Because you think pictures in adult books are beneath you?"
"I'm reforming."
"Good. Oh! The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua. It's about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage building the Analytical Engine and having steampunk adventures. Very silly. Very nerdy. You'll love it."
"That sounds perfect. Wait – Lovelace as in Byron's daughter?"
"The very same! Lord Byron's only legitimate daughter. He called her 'the princess of parallelograms.' Then he died when she was eight and she channelled all that into mathematics."
"And there's a graphic novel about her?"
"Where she fights crime with mathematics in an alternate Victorian universe. It's magnificent."
At home, Crowley and Aziraphale compiled a list. Ranked by consensus and how many people had gestured wildly while recommending each one:
MUST READ:
- Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
- Watchmen - Alan Moore
- From Hell - Alan Moore
- The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage - Sydney Padua
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
- My Favorite Thing is Monsters - Emil Ferris
- Habibi - Craig Thompson
"This is ambitious," Aziraphale said, looking at the list.
"We're not reading them all at once. One a week. Saturday reading together."
"Our new thing?"
"Our new thing."
Fun Home was complicated – layers of literary references, non-linear structure, Bechdel's relationship with her closeted gay father intertwined with her own coming out, his death (suicide? accident?), their family's funeral home business.
"Look at the structure," Aziraphale said, absorbed. "She's using Ulysses, The Importance of Being Earnest, Remembrance of Things Past – all these literary references to understand her father. He was an English teacher. Literature was how they communicated."
"She's also using it as a shield," Crowley added. "See? She can't talk about her father's death directly, so she talks about it through Fitzgerald and Wilde and Joyce. The literary references are armour."
"I can relate. That's very us."
"And look at the metafiction," Crowley pointed to panels of Bechdel at her drawing desk, researching, remembering. "She's showing you her process. That's Woolf-ian. Very modernist."
"My student was right," Aziraphale said. "This is as sophisticated as Mrs Dalloway. Just in a different medium."
"Next week is Lovelace and Babbage and I predict you're going to be insufferable about it."
"Why would I be insufferable?"
"Because it's about Victorian stuff and impossible machines. It's specifically designed for you."
Aziraphale opened The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage and immediately started laughing.
"What?" Crowley asked.
"Look at this. It's – it's Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage in an alternate universe where the Analytical Engine actually got built and they fight crime with mathematics."
"And?"
"It's funny! And look – footnotes! The entire bottom half of each page is footnotes explaining the actual history, the real mathematics, the real people. It's like Terry Pratchett meets Victorian history meets computer science."
They read together, both of them delighted.
"It's deeply silly but also deeply researched," Crowley observed. "Look at this – Padua's citing actual Lovelace letters, actual Babbage correspondence. This is serious historical research turned into absurdist adventure."
"And the art," Aziraphale pointed to a complex panel showing the Analytical Engine. "She's drawn this impossible machine in detail. Made it beautiful. Made Victorian mathematics exciting."
They read the entire book in one sitting, both of them grinning, both of them occasionally reading footnotes aloud.
"'Lovelace was possibly the only person who understood what Babbage was trying to do,'" Aziraphale read from a footnote. "'She saw that the Analytical Engine could be used for anything – not just mathematics but music, art, poetry. She invented the concept of programming.'"
"Byron's daughter inventing computer programming," Crowley mused. "From 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know' to 'have you tried turning it off and on again' in one generation."
"Actually, Lovelace inherited some of Byron's wildness. She gambled extensively. Had affairs. Died young, like Byron. But she channelled his chaos into logic."
"Romantic poet to Romantic mathematician. And Padua makes that funny without diminishing it," Crowley said. "She's celebrating Lovelace. Making her a hero."
"This is my favourite so far," Aziraphale announced. "I know Maus is more important and Fun Home is more sophisticated but – this is pure joy. This is someone who loves history and Victoriana, making something delightful out of it."
"You identify with Lovelace, don’t you?"
"I identify with someone who sees connections others don't. Who – " Aziraphale paused, "– who was dismissed by her contemporaries and only recognized later."
"You're not dismissed –"
"I'm a literature professor who spent his career on obscure 19th century novels while everyone else did theory. I'm not exactly celebrated." Aziraphale smiled. "But I like what I do. Like Lovelace liked mathematics. That's enough."
"I love you," Crowley said.
"I love you too. And I love that we're reading graphic novels about Victorian mathematicians who fight crime together."
"Next week is Watchmen. Fair warning: it's dark."
"Ah. So after Victorian whimsy, we're going full nihilism?"
"It's called 'range'. Keep up, angel."
"This is going to be different," Crowley warned, handing Aziraphale the thick volume of Watchmen. "Alan Moore is known to be – complicated. Brilliant but difficult. This is a deconstruction of superhero comics. Very dark. Very 80s."
"I don't know anything about superhero comics."
"Doesn’t matter. Just – read it. Pay attention to the structure. Moore does things with the medium that are extraordinary."
They read. The story was bleak – masked vigilantes in an alternate 1980s, Nixon still president, nuclear war imminent, murder mystery, conspiracy, moral ambiguity.
"This is clever," Aziraphale said, noticing the structure. "Look – each chapter ends with excerpts from other texts. Pirate comics, memoirs, psychological evaluations. Moore is building the world through different narrative forms."
"And look at the symmetry," Crowley showed a chapter that was perfectly mirrored – the first page and last page identical, the structure folding back on itself. "Moore is using the visual medium to create meaning. This chapter is about symmetry. The structure reinforces the theme."
"Rorschach is terrifying," Aziraphale observed.
"Rorschach is what happens when you take moral absolutism to its logical extreme. He's Batman if Batman were a right-wing extremist sociopath. Moore is showing you the fascism inherent in vigilante justice."
"And the Comedian – "
"Is showing you American imperialism and violence. Everyone in this book represents something. It's satire disguised as superhero comics."
They read the ending, the ambiguous conclusion.
"I don't know how I feel about this," Aziraphale admitted. "It's obviously brilliant. But it's so bleak. So cynical."
"That's Moore. That's nuclear anxiety. That's Reagan and Thatcher and the Cold War." Crowley closed the book. "But look at what he did with the medium. This couldn't work as a novel. The symmetry, the pirate comic subplot, the visual metaphors – it's all specifically comics."
"I respect it more than I enjoy it."
"That's fair. Moore is deliberately difficult. He's also kind of insufferable in interviews."
"Is that relevant to the work?"
"No, but it makes me feel better about not loving everything he writes. Next week is From Hell. Also Moore, but Victorian and extremely researched. It's about Jack the Ripper."
"More cheerful subject matter then."
"It's Moore. 'Cheerful' isn't in his vocabulary. But you’ll love it. Just – prepare yourself."
From Hell was massive – over 500 pages, dense with Victorian detail, black and white art by Eddie Campbell, appendices longer than most novels.
"This is Moore's theory about Jack the Ripper," Crowley explained. "He thinks it was a Masonic conspiracy involving the royal physician. He's probably completely wrong about the actual murders, but he uses it to write about Victorian London, about poverty and women and the birth of the modern era."
"Should we be reading a graphic novel that makes Jack the Ripper the protagonist?" Aziraphale asked carefully.
"He's not the hero. Moore is very clear about that. The women are the heroes. The Ripper is – a symbol. The violence of modernity. The murder of the old world. It's complicated, as usual."
They read. It was disturbing – graphic violence, Moore's dense prose, Campbell's scratchy art making Victorian London feel claustrophobic and dark.
"This is extraordinarily researched," Aziraphale said, reading the appendices. "Historical sources for every location, every person, every detail. This is academic-level research in graphic novel form."
"And look at the structure," Crowley pointed to a sequence. "Moore uses the murders to talk about Victorian architecture, about city planning, about how London was literally being rebuilt. The Ripper is murdering women, but he's also murdering the old city. Making way for the modern."
"It's using horror to talk about history."
"Look – "Crowley showed a panel of the Ripper walking through London, the architecture changing around him. "That's visual storytelling. Moore is showing you time and space simultaneously. The city as a character. I rather love it."
They finished late into the night, both exhausted.
"That was really good and I never want to read it again," Aziraphale said.
"That's the correct response to From Hell," Crowley agreed. "Moore at his most Moore. Genius and deeply unpleasant."
"Can we read something less murdery next week?"
"My Favorite Thing is Monsters. Fair warning – still involves murder and the Holocaust, but at least it's through the perspective of a ten-year-old who draws herself as a werewolf."
"That's somehow both better and worse than I hoped for."
My Favorite Thing is Monsters looked like a child's notebook – ballpoint pen drawings, spiral binding visible on every page, a ten-year-old girl drawing herself as a werewolf-detective.
"This is lovely," Aziraphale said immediately. "Look at the art. Ferris drew the entire book in ballpoint pen to look like a kid's monster notebook."
"She got West Nile virus and was partially paralyzed," Crowley said, reading the afterword. "Taught herself to draw again. Then drew this entire book in ballpoint pen."
"That's – that's extraordinary dedication to the form."
The story was complex – ten-year-old Karen living in 1960s Chicago, investigating her neighbour’s death, uncovering Holocaust survivor stories, navigating her own queerness and identity, her mother dying of cancer, her brother joining a gang.
"It's doing so many things," Crowley said. "Look – these panels showing the neighbour’s past in Nazi Germany. Then back to Karen's present. Then the museum where Karen sees paintings."
"And Karen imagines herself as a monster," Aziraphale observed. "Because she's queer. Because she doesn't fit. But she makes it powerful. Being a monster means being strong. Being able to see what others miss."
They read for hours, both absorbed.
"Look," Crowley showed a sequence of Karen studying paintings in the museum, Ferris recreating famous artworks. "She's teaching you art history while telling Karen's story. Making connections between historical art and Karen's lived experience."
They finished the first volume exhausted and amazed.
"That's the most ambitious thing we've read so far," Aziraphale said. "The art alone. It’s obsessive. That's years of work."
"That's believing graphic novels matter. That they're worth that kind of work."
"They are," Aziraphale said quietly. "We were wrong to dismiss them."
"We were insufferable snobs."
"We were. But we're learning."
Two months later, they sat in their living room surrounded by graphic novels – read and re-read, annotated in notebooks because you can't write in the margins of graphic novels without ruining the art.
"So," Crowley said. "Verdict? Are graphic novels literature?"
"Yes," Aziraphale said immediately. "Unequivocally yes. The good ones – the ones we read – are doing things prose can't. Visual storytelling, metafiction through form, showing simultaneity and memory and sensation in ways words alone can't achieve."
"But?"
"But – like any medium, most of them aren't as good as these. For every Maus there are probably a hundred mediocre superhero comics. That's true of literature too, though. Many novels are mediocre. But the best graphic novels – those are art."
"What was your favourite?"
"Still Lovelace and Babbage," Aziraphale admitted. "I know that's not the most important. But it was joyful. It celebrated intelligence and history. It made me happy."
"Mine's still Maus," Crowley said. "For doing what seemed impossible – making art about the Holocaust that was honest and respectful and devastating and necessary."
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, the Edinburgh evening settling around them.
"You know what I love about this?" Crowley said finally.
"The graphic novels?"
"No. Well, yes. But –" He gestured vaguely at the chaos around them, at the two of them sitting close together on the sofa. "It’s this. Us doing this. You came to me with a question and instead of just answering it, we spent weeks reading together. Being wrong together and then being less wrong."
Aziraphale smiled. "That's what we always do."
"Most people would have just googled 'are graphic novels legitimate' and moved on. We got feral again, took notes."
"To be fair, you started it with 'Holocaust memoir in animal form.'"
"I was easing you in gently."
"That's your idea of gentle?"
"Compared to From Hell? Absolutely."
Aziraphale laughed, then leaned against Crowley's shoulder. "I'm revising my syllabus. Adding Fun Home. Maybe Maus."
"Look at you. Graphic novels in the literature department. Revolutionary. Brave".
"Not revolutionary. Catching up. My students were already ahead of me. I'm just acknowledging that they were right.” Aziraphale hesitated for a moment. “Also, not brave, because you make it safe to be wrong about something. That's what I love about you most, actually. I can be wrong, and you just read graphic novels with me until I'm less wrong."
Crowley was quiet for a moment. "That might be the sweetest thing you've ever said to me."
"Really? Sweeter than the time I said you were intellectually fascinating?"
"Much sweeter. That was professional admiration. This is –" Crowley gestured again, searching for the right words. "This is you thanking me for holding your hand while you figured things out. It’s lovely."
"I do love you," Aziraphale said quietly.
"I know. I love you too. We spent a gruesome evening reading about Jack the Ripper. That's proof of love."
Aziraphale reached for Crowley's hand. "Same time next week?"
Crowley smiled. "I was thinking we could finally try Habibi. Or we could just reread Lovelace and Babbage because I know you want to."
"You know me too well. Husband."
They sat together as the room darkened, neither of them moving to turn on a light, just sitting in the comfortable twilight with their books and their discoveries and each other.