What's your familiarity with graphic novels? Why/how might graphic novels be useful for the secondary English language arts classroom?

What's your familiarity with graphic novels? Why/how might graphic novels be useful for the secondary English language arts classroom?

I am an avid reader of graphic novels, comic books, and Japanese manga. I have experienced so many different styles of artwork and a variety of genres that I can not recount them all. My experiences with graphic novels is primarily of my own devices. As a kid, my parents would do weekly visits to the library. Graphic novels were some of my favorite pieces to check out of the library. I read manga meant for children, collections of Garfield comics, and even the occasional super hero comic book. At school, the library was limited especially when it came to graphic novels. The library at my elementary school had a graphic novel called Bones and some books with classic comics from the newspaper (like Garfield and Foxtrot). I was regularly discouraged by my teachers for reading graphic novels so often instead of "real books". I stopped reading graphic novels at school and kept it to my home life until I got to high school. I had become friends with some other students who liked graphic novels and the teachers didn't judge me for reading them. It wasn't until college that graphic novels were used as part of the course material. In my "Intro to Fiction" class with Dr. Ian Green, Green assigned a graphic novel, a famous Batman comic, as part of pur reading list.
I believe graphic novels have a great potential for use in classrooms. It allows for a different platform and genre for students to explore as well as create a foundation for analyzing visual media. Visual media is everywhere and is viewed more often than written media nowadays. Graphic novels can provide literary pieces that need to be analyzed visually and as a written piece since there is almost always some kind of story behind the visuals. I find graphic novels to provide a more entertaining way of looking at visual media than commercials and common images in everyday life. Visual media also allows teachers to work with more aspects and ideas with a single piece of literature than a standard novel could due to the many aspects involved in a graphic novel which would allow teachers more time to teach more things or lessons more in depth.