visual literacy (?)

i'm seeing a lot of talk about visual literacy at the c's, but so much of the talk is about comics. 

i've got nothing against comics, although i've never been into them. they're fine. i recall seeing my first comic book in a Circle K (ha) and not knowing how to pronounce "The Unknown" (i was a kid and included the hard "k." what was the un"k"nown?).

but so it seems (from what i'm hearing) that comics are ideal visual literacies; i'm not so sure. maybe too easy . . . all packaged and tidy, text to tell you what it all means, lined up in pretty neat boxes (like paragraphs!).

i'm sure i'm missing it. but for now, i can't get excited about comics. Anne did some nice work (no surprise) framing up her discussion by thinking through historical discourses on how words and/vs. images operate as gendered binaries (guess how that plays out? hint: this one's easy).