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I think it's important to divorce the quality of the work from the genre.
Every genre has both excellent and abysmal books. One can read good books in fantasy, SF, romance, mystery or any other genre; however, one can also read crappy books in every genre too. You can also learn from both good and bad books - even if it's only what not to do.
As for the question of whether graphic novels are literature; I think that's the wrong way to phrase the question. I think it would be better reformulated as "Can graphic novels be considered literature?" I believe some of them can. I'm not so much speaking of the trade paperback or hardcover collections of half a dozen issues of Spider-Man or Batman as I am of works like Watchmen, which was conceived as a single whole.
Watchmen has won awards and is widely considered a work of literature. It's a story that as written could only be told in the graphic form. It's not just the plot and character but also aspects like panel arrangement (which cannot be duplicated in other forms) that help cement it as a notable literary work.
Someone mentioned E.E. "Doc" Smith further up the thread as an example of space opera that they could simply pick up and read from any point. Even so, as a student of his work, I wouldn't really consider "Doc" a bad writer. While characterization was not his strong point, he was very technically skillful (often using hideously convoluted but grammatically correct English) and there are several levels to much of his later work.
Then there are people like Robert E. Howard. He wrote adventure stories for the pulps; which by some standards would be considered "bad." Is reading Howard "bad?" There are several dozen volumes of Howard scholarship that could dispute that. That's not counting the current reissues of his fiction both by Del Rey and the University of Nebraska Press. (Plus other less well known editions.)
I think it's as much about how much one is willing to put into the work as the work itself. If one reads actively and with their mind fully engaged in the work, then how can it be bad for one's mind?
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