Here is a preface to Troublemaker by Janet and Alex Evanovich. Like comics work from novelists such as Denise Mina, James Patterson and Ian Rankine, Dark Horse Comics (or Dark Horse Books as they refer to themselves on the spine of this work) publish work by these authors in an understandable and laudable attempt to attract readers who would usually not read comics. It's the first such crossover book to include an instruction manual on how to follow a comics page though.
It does seem kind of ridiculous, especially to someone such as I who has read comics all my days, but I think they may be onto something. I have seen people look at comics pages and just think "No, I don't want to deal with this". This "comics are too difficult for people to read" argument has rumbled along for at least a couple of decades, and I've heard plenty of skeptical views towards it from learned comics individuals.
But consider this: I think it may be similar the disconnect felt when Yoof TV show Network 7 started putting words running along the screen in one or more places while a presenter was talking. The mix of looking and reading was confusing! It's now the norm and difficult to remember what was so jarring about it.
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