First of all, I'm not sure why you're mentioning Dr Seuss, considering that he never made any comics. He made picture-books. Not the same thing at all. Secondly:
You're missing the point of manga completely. First of all, you can do stuff that just isn't possible in TV or anime. For instance:
1. You can show stuff happening simultanously. Keitaro sitting at his desk trying to study, Su telling him to come and play, Shinobu asking him to explain a maths problem, Aoyama reciting a Buddhist sutra, all at the same time. In anime, you can't do that; if the viewer is supposed to hear everything that's being said the characters have to take turns speaking. But in manga, they can all be speaking at the same time and it won't be a problem to the reader.
No, I think you're mistaken. Everything can happen at once in an anime; I've actually gone to voice acting lessons, and a lot of instances we all had to talk at the same time without tripping over each others words in any given scene. Things can happen simultaneously whether or not it's through an animated medium, or just plain picture-by-picture. This can also happen in a book, given that it's what the author decrees.
2. You can show action in completely new ways. In anime, you just see people moving, but in manga we see the movement itself. IYou say that you could have seen them moving had you been watching anime, but in manga you can draw them in such a way that they look like they're moving.
...why is this a valid point? Manga is, by (admittedly my) definition an Anime's cliffnotes. It gets the general meaning across, but it doesn't hold the flowing movement that animation can convey. It's stilted, and feels more like I'm watching the planning phase of an anime, rather than reading a completed work.
3. You can have as much talking as you want to. You can have Naru hit Keitaro in the face while she's shouting "Go to hell, you damn pervert!" Try having her say all that while throwing a punch in the anime. Wouldn't work. Throwing a punch just happens too fast. But it's feasible in a manga.
If you've noticed, most of the time when someone is making an action like that in an anime, their mouth is covered up. Besides, in anime, it's not like their mouth matches the movement of what lips are supposed to do. Japanese Animation is notorious for it, and often made fun of in things like...Speed Racer spoofs.
4. You can narrate and show stuff happening simultaneously. That's not possible in a movie, where you can't have voice-over narrating going on at the same time as people are having a conversation the viewer is supposed to hear. And in a novel, you can't tell people about more than one thing at a time. But in a manga, you can have two people kissing and telling each other "I love you" while one of them is thinking "I'm going to break up with you. Soon; pretty soon.
Admittedly no, you can't have any narration while people are talking, while at the same time being able to hear both clearly and concisely. But then again, Narration in and of itself is to say what isn't being said in the first place, to set a mood or to show a setting without the use of animation. As to your second point in this...no, it can't happen at the same time, but that's what patience is. You have to think that it is happening in the same span of time because the author intended it to; the same thing proves true with Manga: Dialogue is moved in a certain order according to what position it is on the panel you are currently reading, so in reality, it's still moving at a 'not at the same time' pace, since you still have to read one thing at a time.
5. The reader can take as much time as s/he needs to to understand what's going on. This is quite necessary in stories like Death Note.
And what's to stop people from reading a part in a book over again and again until they get it?
6. We only see a few pictures here and there. When somebody is saying something in a manga, we see a picture of them talking. But when an anime character is saying something, we see every single lip movement. There's not much point to this. A monologue won't be more enjoyable because you see every single lip movement.
...uh, ok. So someone standing there, saying a complete sentence with their mouth hanging open the entire time, is so much better than actual (admittedly poorly-animated) lip movement.
7. You can stop for a second to admire a really beautiful drawing. An excellent example of this can be found in Blade of the Immortal, which often features a really beautiful drawing of Manji killing somebody that you just want to look at for at least ten seconds.
Have you actually seen the images that are on the front and back covers of some of these books? They're absolutely gorgeous works of art, and usually give a good depiction of the characters that are being written about, so you know exactly what they look like before you even open the book.
8. You can use panels to give a unique sense of time. Take Lone Wolf & Cub, for instance. A page shows us three panels. In the first one, we see a road. Something can be vaguely distinguished in the distance. In the second panel, it's closer and we see it's a man with a baby carriage. In the third panel, he's closer, walking towards us. We see him much clearer.
You can write and describe the same effect in a storybook too (if the author is good), but with much greater detail than black-and-white economy print in a stamp-sized panel.
What bothers me most is that you seem to sincerely believe that comics want to be novels. That it's an either/or choice, that one reads comics instead of novels. To be frank, I find this quite ignorant, no offense intended. You say that in a novel you get to form your own image of what's going on. This is true. In a comic, on the other hand, you get to see things exactly the way the creator intended them to look. Not like novels, where the writer is forced to let you form your own images because no verbal description can be good enough to ensure that all readers form the intended mental images. But in comics, they always look exactly the way they're supposed to.
I never actually said manga and/or comics wanted to be novels. I merely implied that they are a pointless medium of written entertainment than your average book. If I wanted to see something of an anime, I'll go watch the anime instead of getting the manga. It's a decent balance between the two (book and animation), but it still isn't quite good enough for me. I would understand reading a Manga if the anime did not exist, and I would understand it if (Naruto, for example) the anime isn't caught up to the Manga, and you reeeeally want to know what happens next. Writers are indeed forced to let the readers form their own ideas of what a given area looks like, but this is usually based on the writer's skill. If they're good enough, they can paint a beautiful picture of a given room with only a paragraph or so, and it's not straining at all to picture it in one's mind. Most authors, sadly, take this too far and end up dragging it out until it becomes nothing more than filler.
Bottom line is: I don't like manga. I feel that if you want to find out what happens next on Naruto, or see who hits on whom in Love Hina, then you're better off just going out and buying the DVD. Did you ever stop to think that Manga is leaving one factor out? Voices. You cannot hear voices from a Manga, so it's not entirely infallible in 'just as the author intended'. Neither are books, I'll admit. They have a lot of points where they're quite boring to the majority of people (such as finding the right author to suit your tastes), but I myself have found my niche and am quite happily sticking to it. Perhaps I was a little bit rude on the subject, but those are my viewpoints and I'm enough of an ass that I'll state them no matter whose feathers I ruffle. I apologize for my rudeness, but not for my statement. Manga, comics, what-have-you...they're a waste of money.
