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Graphic novel

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Literature types

   A graphic novel (GN) 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 (OGN).

   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"
   (similar to the manner in which dramatic stories are included in
   "comic" books).

   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 (1967) 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 (including Franco-Belgian
   comics series such as "The Adventures of Tintin" and " Lieutenant
   Blueberry", and Italian series such as " Corto Maltese").

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" (Sabin, 291) of
   this revival. Among Masereel's works were Passionate Journey (1926,
   reissued 1985 as Passionate Journey: A Novel in 165 Woodcuts ISBN
   0-87286-174-0). 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 (1930), 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, 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" ( Arnold Drake and Leslie 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 (Adventure
   House Press) in 1968 — the same year Marvel Comics published two issues
   of The Spectacular Spider-Man in a similar format. Columnist Steven
   Grant also argues that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's Doctor Strange story
   in Strange Tales #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 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 (1971), 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 ( ISBN
   1-56097-456-7) 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. (It is also the first with an original
   heroic-adventure character conceived expressly for this form.) DC
   Comics' The Sinister House of Secret Love (retitled Secrets of Sinister
   House with issue #5) used the phrase "a graphic novel of gothic terror"
   on the cover of issue #2 (Jan. 1972). 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 (1972) and The Snowman (1978), 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 (1982), 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 (adapted from a story by Robert E.
   Howard) 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 Chandler: Red Tide (1976) 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 (Nantier,
   Beall, Minoustchine), 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, Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species by writer Don
   McGregor and artist Paul Gulacy ( Eclipse Books, Aug. 1978) — 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 ( Flying Buttress
   Press).

   Another early graphic novel, though it carried no self-description, was
   The Silver Surfer ( Simon & Schuster/Fireside Books, Aug. 1978), 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 (though not the
   hardcover edition) of Will Eisner's groundbreaking A Contract with God,
   and Other Tenement Stories (Oct. 1978). 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 (see above) 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 (Spring 1966).

   One of the earliest contemporaneous applications of the term
   post-Eisner came in 1979, when Blackmark's 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 (Winter 1979), 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 (1978)
   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 ( Jim Starlin's The Death of Captain Marvel) to #35 (
   Denny O'Neil, Mike Kaluta, and Russ Heath's Hitler's Astrologer,
   starring the radio and pulp fiction character the Shadow, and, uniquely
   for this line, released in hardcover). 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, 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, 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 colour 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 (1986),
   helped establish both the term and the concept of graphic novels in the
   minds of the mainstream public. These were Batman: The Dark Knight
   Returns (1986), 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 (1987), 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 (former editor, The New York Times Book Review) 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 sold 100,000 in hardback...."

Artistic movement

   Eddie Campbell issued a 2004 manifesto to the effect that the term
   "(g)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 ("Of course,
   graphic novels — like trade paperbacks, which we'll get into next
   time....") .

   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".

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