My first instinct was to say no, but as I thought about it more it became more of a gray area. Comics use art and illustration to convey scene, and the only “reading” per se is dialogue and sometimes narration. Most novels lean more on description and imagination. But certain books/plays like Hamlet or The Iliad are also mostly dialogue/narration yet we consider those to be “reading”, essentially just without the art.

It is reading. The medium is not the issue. Some people read romance novels or adventure novels, are they better than romance or adventure comics?

This is like going back to when books were considered bad because theatre was the main way to tell stories.

The discussion to have is about the topics these comic books are covering. Are they varied enough? Can everything be made into a comic?

But if having some illustrations is helping anyone to read, they should go for it.

I agree with jordanlund, and consider “comics” as reading. Just read what you enjoy, but nothing wrong with trying out different stuff and see if anything catches your fancy. For instance, I recently learned about autobiographical graphic novels, basically, they are memoirs or auto biographies, but in comic format. Persepolis and Maus are couple of famous examples.

no i think reading is reading a book, as in interpreting words written on a page and creating a world in your head where what you’ve read exists

but the other stuff is fucking great too

I’ve never used Tiktok or YT shorts. I did go down the Instagram rabbit hole for a while but I deleted my account when I realized I was spending hours on it. I’ve gone back to reading and writing as much as possible. It was kinda hard to re-learn my reading habit. That said, I do read several webcomics and have tons of comic books in .cbz and .cbr format that I’ve been reading through. I would consider it reading but on the lighter side since I don’t have to use my brain to figure out what the characters and scenes look like.

I’m going to answer with “无”. In this context meaning that I think the question…

My question do you consider them as reading?

…is badly formulated and needs to be recast.

My suggestion for recasting your question is: “Do I care what other people consider to be reading?”

Do you derive pleasure from reading them? Does this pleasure change if other people don’t consider it reading? I submit the answers to these questions should be “yes” (otherwise why do it?) and “no” (because other people’s opinions are relevant largely to their own life only) respectively.

Enjoy what you read, however and whenever you find time to. Life has few enough opportunities for joy these days. Don’t look for more reasons to have less of it.

Manga and graphic novels are definitely ‘easier’ for me to read than traditional novels. There are fewer words, the action is more prominent, and the art kind of directs your focus for you. It’s sort of in-between a book and a movie/show. That said, I do think it’s a valid form of ‘reading’. Reading doesn’t have to be a book that is at least X amount of words.

I wouldn’t consider it reading other than in the strictest technical sense.