Despite certain extreme claims about what counts as "sequential art" modern comics are only about 100 years old. It isn't really fair to compare them to their drawing-deprived counterparts, which have a good 1000 years of material to work from. But we'll do it anyways.

Books have had hundreds of years to gain structures, vocabularies, and references. They are critically analyzed beginning in grade school, have graduate level programs of study, journals discussing aspects of semiotics I will never understand, reviews in well respected newspapers, and an unquestioned cultural value. Tell someone you didn't see the latest "American Idol" (feel free to insert your own hated but popular current television show equivalent) because you were reading Dostoyevsky and they will think you are pretensious and probably a liar, but also probably a good person to have on your team when playing Trivial Pursuit. Books have more intellectual weight than most media in this day and age. Tell someone you were reading comics and they will suddenly have to go to the bathroom, never to return to their seat.

It can't just be the length of time the media has existed, though, to account for its popularity. Movies are on approximately the same time scale, and they have both popularity and critical relevance.

So why don't comics get that respect in the US? Well, the answer should be obvious. It is very tempting to say it is because comics don't deserve respect because they mostly suck, but that is true for all media. I think it happens because comics haven't created the surrounding support structues that give the medium respect.

And it is time to change that.