There are still some people out there who believe comic books are

Host: The subway car rattled through the underground darkness, a long metallic pulse echoing through tiled tunnels. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead — pale, cold, indifferent — casting long, fractured reflections on the windows. Jack sat slouched in one corner, his coat collar turned up, a worn comic book open in his hands. Jeeny sat beside him, her fingers wrapped around a steaming paper cup of coffee, her eyes watching the blur of graffiti-stained walls flash by.

The train was half-empty. The only other sounds were the humming of old wheels, the rustle of paper, and the faint whisper of the city’s pulse above.

Jeeny: “That’s what you’re reading tonight?”

Jack: “Yeah.” (He flips a page.) “John Ridley once said, ‘There are still some people out there who believe comic books are nothing more than, well, comic books. But the true cognoscenti know graphic novels are — at their best — an amazing blend of art, literature, and the theater of the mind.’”

Jeeny: “Ah, yes. The art of stories in panels and color. The world where emotions bleed in ink.”

Host: The train swayed, a low mechanical sigh filling the pause between their words. Jack’s eyes, sharp and gray, flickered with a faint, almost reluctant fondness.

Jack: “You sound like you actually believe that. Most people just see them as kid stuff — heroes in tights saving the world.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the problem. We think simplicity means shallowness. But sometimes, the stories that wear color and capes say more about us than the ones dressed in realism.”

Jack: “You’re romanticizing ink and paper.”

Jeeny: “And you’re underestimating imagination.”

Host: Jack smirked, his thumb pausing at a splash page — a hero standing over a fallen city, torn cape fluttering in the wind. The color, though faded, still carried weight — a kind of emotion words alone couldn’t hold.

Jack: “You really think comics belong next to Dostoevsky or Shakespeare?”

Jeeny: “In their best form, yes. When Alan Moore wrote Watchmen, he wasn’t just telling a story about heroes — he was dissecting the idea of morality, power, and human corruption. That’s philosophy wearing a mask.”

Jack: “Maybe. But people don’t read it that way. They flip pages for explosions, not existential crises.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the failure isn’t in the medium — but in how people choose to see it.”

Host: The train lurched slightly. Overhead, a woman’s recorded voice announced the next station, her tone robotic and gentle, like a ghost guiding lost travelers.

Jack: “You sound like an evangelist for art. You think every drawing, every frame, is sacred.”

Jeeny: “Not sacred — human. You can tell a child’s heart by the way they draw their dreams. Comic books are that — the world as it looks when we still believe in meaning.”

Jack: “And when we grow up, we trade color for gray. Realism for responsibility. I get it.”

Host: Jeeny smiled softly, not in mockery but in understanding. Her eyes reflected the flicker of the passing lights, and for a moment, it was as though the train’s motion itself had become the pulse of memory.

Jeeny: “You know, Jack, comics were born from war, pain, and rebellion. During the Great Depression, people found escape in those pages. In World War II, heroes fought Nazis in ink before soldiers did in blood. They were never just stories — they were survival.”

Jack: “So now, what? You’re saying Batman is therapy?”

Jeeny: “Maybe. Why not? Every generation writes its myths. The Greeks had Zeus; we have Bruce Wayne. Different mediums, same hunger — to understand our darkness, to imagine justice.”

Host: Jack’s eyes narrowed slightly, but there was a glint of reluctant admiration beneath his skepticism.

Jack: “You’re telling me you see mythology in Marvel?”

Jeeny: “Of course. You think Tony Stark isn’t a modern Icarus? You think the Hulk isn’t the embodiment of man’s war with his own rage? Or that Wonder Woman isn’t Athena reborn with compassion and strength? These are mirrors, Jack — every frame, every line of dialogue — they’re reflections of who we wish we were, or fear we are.”

Host: The rhythm of the train became slower, the lights dimming as it neared the next station. A brief silence grew, heavy with thought.

Jack: “I suppose you’re right. Maybe art doesn’t need to wear a tuxedo to be profound.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Ridley was right — graphic novels are theater for the mind. You create the motion between frames. You fill the silence between words. It’s not passive reading; it’s co-creation.”

Jack: “And yet most people still dismiss it. Maybe we fear imagination — because it makes us responsible for what we see.”

Host: The train slowed. A gust of air swept through as the doors opened, carrying the faint smell of rain and the city’s restless night. No one boarded. No one left. The two remained, framed in the pale light, caught between motion and stillness.

Jeeny: “Do you remember Maus?”

Jack: “Yeah. The Holocaust told through mice and cats. Read it in college.”

Jeeny: “It won the Pulitzer, Jack. A comic book. Because sometimes the simplest images carry the heaviest truth.”

Jack: “I remember one line — when Art Spiegelman said, ‘Somehow, I wish I could stop drawing.’ That hit me. Like… art wasn’t an escape for him. It was confession.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. That’s what comics really are — confessions disguised as fantasies. They let us look at our wounds through heroes so we can stand the pain.”

Host: The train started again, the wheels clattering like heartbeat drums. The world outside was a blur of tunnels and light, but inside the car, the air had grown still, intimate.

Jack: “So maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe I’ve been too busy dissecting the world to realize stories aren’t meant to be solved — they’re meant to be felt.”

Jeeny: “Yes. And that’s the theater of the mind Ridley was talking about. When you read, you stage it inside your head — every color, every pause, every scream. It’s your mind performing the play.”

Host: Jeeny leaned back, closing her eyes, as if hearing a distant orchestra only she could perceive. Jack flipped another page — the panel showed a broken hero, standing on a rooftop under lightning. His eyes lingered there, not on the art, but on what it said about him.

Jack: “Maybe we all have a comic like that inside us — frames of things we couldn’t say, drawn in silence.”

Jeeny: “And maybe someday, we’ll learn to read each other’s panels.”

Host: The lights flickered again, then steadied. The train emerged from the tunnel — the city returning in bursts of neon and rain, reflections painting their faces in shifting shades of red and blue.

Jack: “You know, Jeeny, I think that’s what art really is — the place where reality and imagination shake hands.”

Jeeny: “Yes. And the place where we finally stop being just witnesses — and start being creators.”

Host: The camera would have panned back now — two figures framed by window glass, the comic book open between them, its pages fluttering slightly in the air from the train’s movement. Outside, buildings rose like dark monoliths against the night sky, and above them, billboards flashed stories of their own — panels of human life in constant motion.

The train disappeared into another tunnel, swallowed again by the dark, but the small light of the carriage — and of their words — remained.

Host: Because in the end, art, like humanity, is not about escape — it’s about reflection.
It’s the place where image, word, and soul finally meet —
and where every reader, every dreamer,
becomes an artist of their own mind.