Encyclopedia
A
graphic novel is a long-form work in the
comics form, usually with lengthy and complex storylines, and often aimed at mature audiences. In contrast to the familiar comic
magazines, a graphic novel is typically
bound using materials of more durable qualities, using a light
card stock for softcover bindings or a heavier card for the hardback editions, enclosed in a dust jacket. Graphic novels generally are sold in
bookstores and comic book shops, rather than on comic books' original
point of sale, newsstands. The term can also encompass a short story collection, or collected issues of previously published comic books republished in a single large volume.
Comic works created and published as a single narrative, without prior appearance in
magazines, comic books or
newspapers, are called
original graphic novels .
The evolving term "graphic novel" is not strictly defined, and is sometimes used, controversially, to imply subjective distinctions in artistic quality between graphic novels and other kinds of comics. It suggests a story that has a beginning, middle and end, as opposed to an ongoing series with continuing characters; one that is outside the genres commonly associated with comic books, and that deals with more mature themes. It is sometimes applied to works that fit this description even though they are serialized in traditional comic book format. The term is commonly used to disassociate works from the juvenile or humorous connotations of the terms "comics" and "comic book", implying that the work is more serious, mature, or
literary than traditional comics. Following this reasoning, the French term "Bande Dessinée" is occasionally applied, by art historians and others schooled in fine arts, to dissociate comic books in the fine-art tradition from those of popular entertainment, even though in the French language the term has no such connotation and applies equally to all kinds of comic strips and books.
In the
publishing trade, the term is sometimes extended to material that would not be considered a
novel if produced in another medium. Collections of comic books that do not form a continuous story, anthologies or collections of loosely related pieces, and even non-fiction are stocked by
libraries and
bookstores as "graphic novels" .
Whether
manga, which has had a much longer history of both novel-like publishing and production of comics for adult audiences, should be included in the term is not always agreed upon. Likewise, in continental Europe, both original book-length stories such as
La rivolta dei racchi by Guido Buzzeli, and collections of
comic strips have been commonly published in hardcover volumes, often called "albums", since the end of the 19th century .
History
Comics have long been collected into book form, with strips starring the British character
Ally Sloper having been collected as early as 1873 in the United Kingdom. The United States has also had a long tradition of collecting comic strips into book form, and of producing "bumper editions". Whilst these collections and longer-form comic books are not considered graphic novels even by modern standards, they show the presence of an audience for such works, and can be thought of as early steps in the development of the graphic novel.
Antecedents: 1920s to 1960s
The 1920s saw a revival of the
medieval woodcut tradition, with Belgian Frans Masereel often cited as "the undisputed King" of this revival. Among Masereel's works were
Passionate Journey . American Lynd Ward also worked in this tradition during the 1930s.
Other prototypical examples from this period include American Milt Gross'
He Done Her Wrong , a wordless comic published as a hardcover book. That same year, the first European comic-strip collections, called "albums", debuted with
The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets by the Belgian
Hergé.
The 1940s saw the launching of
Classics Illustrated, a comic-book series that primarily adapted notable,
public domain novels into standalone comic books for young readers. The 1950s saw this format broadened, with popular movies being similarly adapted. By the 1960s, British publisher IPC had started to produce a pocket-sized comic book line, the "Super Library", that featured war and spy stories told over roughly 130 pages.
In 1950,
St. John Publications produced the digest-sized, adult-oriented "picture novel"
It Rhymes with Lust is a book, originally published in 1950, considered one of the most notable ...
, a
film noir-influenced slice of steeltown life starring a scheming, manipulative redhead named Rust. Touted as "an original full-length novel" on its cover, the 128-page digest by pseudonymous writer "Drake Waller" , penciler Matt Baker and inker Ray Osrin proved successful enough to lead to an unrelated second picture novel,
The Case of the Winking Buddha by pulp novelist Manning Lee Stokes and illustrator Charles Raab.
By the late 1960s, American comic book creators were becoming more adventurous with the form.
Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin self-published a 40-page,
magazine-format comics novel,
His Name is... Savage in 1968 — the same year
Marvel Comics published two issues of
The Spectacular Spider-Man is the name of several comic book [i]s and one magazine [i] series starri ...
in a similar format. Columnist Steven Grant also argues that
Stan Lee and
Steve Ditko's
Doctor Strange story in
Strange Tales was the name of several comic book [i] anthology [i] series that have been published b ...
#130-146, although published serially from 1965-1966, is "the first American graphic novel".
Meanwhile, in continental Europe, the tradition of collecting serials of popular strips such as
The Adventures of Tintin is a series of comic strip [i] narratives created by Georges Remi under th ...
or
Asterix had allowed a system to develop which saw works developed as long form narratives but pre-published as serials; in the 1970s this move in turn allowed creators to become marketable in their own right, auteurs capable of sustaining sales on the strength of their name.
By 1969, the author
John Updike, who had entertained ideas of becoming a cartoonist in his youth, addressed the Bristol Literary Society, on "the death of the novel". Updike offered examples of new areas of exploration for novelists, declaring "I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic strip novel masterpiece".
Modern form and term
Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin's
Blackmark is a Bantam Books [i] paperback [i], published January 1971, that is ...
, a
science fiction/
sword-and-sorcery paperback published by Bantam, did not use the term originally; the back-cover blurb of the 30th-anniversary edition calls it, retroactively, "the very first American graphic novel," although in theme and style it differs little from traditional comic books. The Academy of Comic Book Arts presented Kane with a special 1971 Shazam Award for what it called "his paperback comics novel". Whatever the nomenclature,
Blackmark is a 119-page story of comic-book art, with captions and
word balloons, published in a traditional book format.
DC Comics'
The Sinister House of Secret Love used the phrase "a graphic novel of gothic terror" on the cover of issue #2 . The series was part of DC's line of 52-Page Giants. Similarly, Jack Katz' The First Kingdom was sometimes described in the frontspieces to the individual issues as the first graphic novel in 1976, although it was published in serial comic magazine format; in earlier issues it was described as "graphic prose", or simply as a novel.
European creators were also experimenting with the longer narrative in comics form; in the United Kingdom, Raymond Briggs was producing works such as
Father Christmas and
The Snowman is a children's book by British [i] author Raymond Briggs [i], published ...
, which he himself described as being from the "bottomless abyss of strip cartooning", although they, along with such other Briggs works as the more mature
When The Wind Blows is a graphic novel [i], by British [i] artist Raymond Briggs [i], ...
, have been re-marketed as graphic novels in the wake of the term's popularity. Briggs notes, however, "I don't know if I like that term too much".
Regardless, the term in 1975 appeared in connection with three separate works.
Bloodstar by
Richard Corben used the term on its cover. George Metzger's
Beyond Time and Again, serialized in
underground comics from 1967-72, was subtitled "A Graphic Novel" on the inside title page when collected as a 48-page, black-and-white, hardcover book published by Kyle & Wheary Comics historian . And the digest-sized
by
Jim Steranko, designed to be sold on
newsstands, used the term "graphic novel" in its introduction and "a visual novel" on its cover, although
Chandler is more commonly considered an illustrated novel than a work of
comics.
The following year, Terry Nantier, who had spent his teenage years living in Paris, returned to the United States and formed Flying Buttress Publications, later to incorporate as NBM Publishing , and published
Racket Rumba, a 50-page spoof of the noir-detective genre, written and drawn by the single-name French artist Loro. Nantier followed this with
Enki Bilal's The Call of the Stars. The company marketed these works as "graphic albums"
Similarly,
by writer
Don McGregor and artist
Paul Gulacy — the first graphic novel sold in the newly created "direct market" of United States comic-book shops — was called a "graphic album" by the author in interviews, though he dubbed it a "comic novel" on its credits page. "Graphic album" was also the term used the following year by Gene Day for his hardcover short-story collection
Future Day .
Another early graphic novel, though it carried no self-description, was
The Silver Surfer , by Marvel Comics'
Stan Lee and
Jack Kirby. Significantly, this was published by a traditional book publisher and distributed through bookstores.
Adoption of the term
The term "graphic novel" began to be popularized two months later after it appeared on the cover of the trade paperback edition of
Will Eisner's groundbreaking
A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories is a graphic novel [i] by Will Eisner [i] that takes the form of several stories ...
. This collection of short stories was a mature, complex work focusing on the lives of ordinary people in the real world, and the term "graphic novel" was intended to distinguish it from traditional comic books, with which it shared a storytelling medium. This established both a new book-publishing term and a category distinct from paperback, although Eisner cited Lynd Ward's 1930s woodcuts as an inspiration.
The critical and commercial success of
A Contract with God helped to establish the term "graphic novel" in common usage, and many sources have incorrectly credited Eisner with being the first to use it. In fact, it was used as early as November 1964 by Richard Kyle in
CAPA-ALPHA #2, a newsletter published by the Comic Amateur Press Alliance, and again in Kyle's
Fantasy Illustrated #5 .
One of the earliest contemporaneous applications of the term post-Eisner came in 1979, when
Blackmarks sequel — published a year after A Contract with God
though written and drawn in the early 1970s — was labeled a "graphic novel" on the cover of Marvel Comics' black-and-white comics magazine Marvel Preview
#17 , where Blackmark: The Mind Demons
premiered — its 117-page contents intact, but its panel-layout reconfigured to fit 62 pages.
Dave Sim's comic book Cerebus had been launched as a funny-animal Conan
parody in 1977, but in 1979 Sim announced it was to be a 300-issue novel telling the hero's complete life story. Over in England, creator Bryan Talbot was working on The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, described by Warren Ellis as "probably the single most influential graphic novel to have come out of Britain to date". Like Sim, Talbot also began by serialising the story; originally in Near Myths
before it was published as a three-volume graphic-novel series from 1982-87.
Following this, Marvel from 1982-88 published the Marvel Graphic Novel line of 10"x7" trade paperbacks — although numbering them like comic books, from #1 to #35 . Marvel commissioned original graphic novels from such creators as
John Byrne, J. M. DeMatteis, Steve Gerber, graphic-novel pioneer McGregor, Frank Miller,
Bill Sienkiewicz,
Walt Simonson,
Charles Vess, and
Bernie Wrightson. While most of these starred Marvel
superheroes, others, such as
Rick Veitch's
Heartburst featured original SF/fantasy characters; others still, such as John J. Muth's
Dracula is an 1897 [i] novel [i] by Irish [i] author Bram Stoker [i], and the name of its ti ...
, featured adaptations of literary stories or characters; and one,
Sam Glanzman's
A Sailor's Story, was a true-life,
World War II naval tale.
In England, Titan Books held the license to reprint strips from
2000 AD, including
Judge Dredd, beginning in 1981, and
Robo-Hunter was a reccurring strip [i] in the British Comic
2000 AD, initially writt ...
, 1982. The company also published British collections of American graphic novels — including
Swamp Thing, notable for being printed in black and white rather than in color as originally — and of British newspaper strips, including
Modesty Blaise and
Garth.
DC Comics likewise began collecting series and published them in book format. Two such collections garnered considerable media attention, and they, along with Art Spiegelman's
Pulitzer Prize-winning
Maus is a memoir presented as a graphic novel [i] by Art Spiegelman [i]. ...
, helped establish both the term and the concept of graphic novels in the minds of the mainstream public. These were
, a collection of Frank Miller's four-part comic-book series featuring an older Batman faced with the problems of a dystopian future; and
Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book [i] written by Alan Moore [i] and illustrated by Dave Gibbons [i] ...
, a collection of
Alan Moore and
Dave Gibbons' 12-issue
limited series in which Moore notes he "set out to explore, amongst other things, the dynamics of power in a post-Hiroshima world."
These three works were reviewed in newspapers and magazines and led to such increased coverage that the headline "Comics aren't just for kids anymore" became widely regarded by fans as a mainstream-press cliché . Regardless, the mainstream coverage led to increased sales, with
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, for example, lasting 40 weeks on a UK best-seller lists.
Quotes
Charles McGrath in
The New York Times, : "Some of the better-known graphic novels are published not by comics companies at all but by mainstream publishing houses — by Pantheon, in particular — and have put up mainstream sales numbers.
Persepolis, for example,
Marjane Satrapi's charming, poignant story, drawn in small black-and-white panels that evoke
Persian miniatures, about a young girl growing up in
Iran and her family's suffering following the 1979
Islamic revolution, has sold 450,000 copies worldwide so far;
Jimmy Corrigan is a widely-acclaimed graphic novel [i] by Chris Ware [i], ...
sold 100,000 in hardback...."
Artistic movement
Eddie Campbell issued a 2004
manifesto to the effect that the term "raphic novel signifies a movement rather than a form." Members of the movement are known as "Graphic Novelists".
Campbell defines the major goal of the movement as being "to take the form of the comic book, which has become an embarrassment, and raise it to a more ambitious and meaningful level." Campbell sees the movement as drawing on many antecedents such as
woodcut novels, but does not wish the term applied to such antecedents. He believes the term cannot be applied to the form with any objective meaning beyond what is necessary for marketing.
Criticism
Some in the comics community have objected to the term "graphic novel" on the grounds that it is unnecessary, or that its usage has been corrupted by commercial interests. Writer
Alan Moore believes, "It's a marketing term. I mean, it was one that I never had any sympathy with. The term 'comic' does just as well for me. ... The problem is that 'graphic novel' just came to mean 'expensive comic book' and so what you'd get is people like DC Comics or Marvel comics — because 'graphic novels' were getting some attention, they'd stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover and call it
The She-Hulk Graphic Novel, you know?" . Others, including Stuart Moore, author of the serialized comics study
A Thousand Flowers, note a distinction between graphic novels and trade paperback collections, writing about them separately .
As a result of this dissatisfaction, some alternative cartoonists have coined their own terms to describe extended comics narratives. For example, the cover of
Daniel Clowes' book
Ice Haven describes the book as "a comic-strip novel", with Clowes having noted that he "never saw anything wrong with the comic book". When
The Comics Journal asked the cartoonist Seth why he added the subtitle "A Picture Novella" to his comic
It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, he responded, "I could have just put 'a comic book'... It goes without saying that I didn't want to use the term graphic novel. I just don't like that term".
See also
- Artist's book
- Collage novel
- Manga
- Tankobon
- Trade paperback
Notes and references
External links
