That isn’t to say I want to criticize the critics but what I have seen recently is mostly the use of comics as a form of criticizing other art forms.  Going back to the film version of Howl nearly every review focuses on it as an act of criticism of the poem itself.   Then reading Davide Toffolo’s graphic novel Pasolini it becomes quite clear that Toffolo is expressing his own views on Pasolini’s general body of work.  What I want to know is: Where is this going?  Are comic books and graphic novels, or graphic novel films (which can become a discussion unto itself) becoming the future of literary criticism and theory?  And then, to what degree?  After having this perspective pushed in directly in front of me through these two texts I have begun to really see comics as having something to take up with the art forms that have preceded them.  Of course every piece of art does this, that is, has a relationship with the past, but something is different here.  Comics have come from being low art to high art, according to some,and along the way have seemingly picked up bits and pieces of each and every other art form.  No other art form includes so many kinds of media, aside from maybe opera, but no one is paying that much attention to opera any longer- at least as a new art form.