After rereading most of Persepolis I would have to agree with what Anita said in her first response - some of the descriptions and extra information got a bit lengthy and hard to read. I've had a problem for years with my eyes drifting ahead to discover something more interesting, and although it was not a frequent happening, I did catch myself breezing through a lot of the exposition alongside the illustrations.

For the most part, I think this was very well done. I was impressed with the illustrations, yes, and thought the simplicity added to the experience. One thing that piqued my interest was the difference between Perfect Example's simple illustrations and Persepolis'. With good ol' Johnny P's illustrations, I was more impressed with the way he found illustrating a graphic novel to make the illustrations almost unimportant/non-integral to the actual reading of the story. As I've mentioned before, I feel one of the things that John refused to let hold him back was that illustrations in graphic novels are usually very detailed, being very precise but not really adding to the realism of the story. When the background is bland, it adds to the sense of a story being told by a peer, and how sometimes what tertiary characters say and do can hinder the actual progression of story. Persepolis had simple illustrations as well, even though they were considerably more detailed than Perfect Example. In this case, however, I thought that the occasional background detail added to the legitimacy of this being a historical novel. Random details like that help make people see the big picture through the medium of, say, an adolescent girl.

I also was interested by the notion that graphic novels may make it easier for students to handle history. This was so much easier to absorb than a textbook, being more entertaining as well as centralized. Like I said, it doesn't ignore the historical significance of events, but rather looks at them from a personal point of view, which I think is the direction a lot of history books (graphic and non) have been heading toward.