The Graphic Novel
The earliest comic books date from the early 1930s and generally were reprints from newspaper comic strips. Superman made his debut in comics in the late 1930s; since then comic books
have been dominated by superheroes of various sorts. Stephen Weiner, author of The 101 Best Graphic Novels, provides the following definition of the graphic novel: A cousin of comic strips, a graphic novel is a story told in comic book format with a beginning, middle, and end. Graphic novels also include bound books conveying nonfiction information in comic book form.
Weiner dates the use of the term "graphic novel" to the publication of A Contract with God: And Other Tenement Stories by Will Eisner in 1978. Eisner marketed his book to adult audiences and sold it in bookstores rather than in drugstores and comic book specialty shops.
In his introduction to Teaching the Graphic Novel editor Stephen E. Tabachnick offers another definition of the graphic novel: The graphic novel is an extended comic book that treats nonfictional as well as fictional plots and themes with the depth and subtlety that we have come to expect of traditional novels and extended nonfictional texts. The term graphic novel seems to have stuck despite the fact that graphic novels are often compelling nonfictional works, such as biograpies, autobiographies, histories, reportage, and travelogues.
Two breakout graphic novels are Art Spiegelman's Maus, which won a special Pulitzer Prize, and Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, both published in 1986.
In Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner points out that the reader of a graphic novel must attend to not only the elements of fiction (plot, character, setting, theme) but also the syntax or grammar of graphic art, that is perspective, symmetry, color, font style, brush-stroke
style. Furthermore, says Eisner in Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, the cognitive processes involved in reading words and viewing graphics are different; readers might see the words or the pictures first or simultaneously. Regardless, the graphics and the text give meaning to each other
Some Elements of Graphic Art
Paneling
The page of the graphic novel is divided into panels rather than paragraphs.
The graphic novelist manipulates the size and placement of the panels to achieve
a particular result.
In Comics and Sequential Art, Eisner points out how paneling works:
"The art of paneling or boxing the action not only defines its perimeters
but established the position of the reader in relation to the scene and
indicates the duration of the event" the "number and size of the panels. . . contribute to the story rhythm and passage of time" ; for example, to compress time increase the number of panels
on the page long, narrow panels imply a sense of being crowded
The panel border can be used like language:
rectangular, straight-edged panels imply action in the present a wavy or scalloped border implies a flashback a lack of frame implies limitless space
Text Treat the text as an image, says Eisner in Comics and Sequential Art.
The font or style of text can convey a mood
The outline of the balloon that encloses the text can convey the sound of the
speech.
The Human Form
Eisner notes that the artist must freeze the form in such a way that he conveys the movement that precedes and the movement that follows from the moment being portrayed.
Gestures, posture, and facial expressions all contribute to the emotion being portrayed
Eisner notes several limitations of the graphic novel:
Because of the specificity of the image portrayed, the graphic novel cannot convey the reader's richer construction of a visual image from words alone.
Graphic novels have difficulty conveying any abstraction or strong emotion.
Eisner sums up the nature of the graphic novel:
The art then [of the graphic novel] is that of deploying images and words, each in exquisitely balanced proportion, within the limitations of the medium and in the face of the still unresolved ambivalence of the audience toward it.
Sources and Further Reading
Eisner, Will.
Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices of the Worlds
Most Popular Art Form. Tamarac, FL.: Poorhouse Press, 1985.
Eisner, Will. Graphic Storytelling and Visual
Narrative. Tamarac, FL.: Poorhouse Press, 1996.
Trabachnick, Stephen, ed. Teaching the Graphic
Novel. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2009.
Weiner, Stephen. "Graphic Novels." Bookmarks
Magazine. September/October 2004: 24-29.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_novel
Wikipedia Answer
As the exact definition of graphic novel is debatable, the origins of the artform itself are open to interpretation. Cave paintings may have told stories, and artists and artisans beginning in the Middle Ages produced tapestries and illuminated manuscripts that told or helped to tell narratives.The first Western artist who interlocked lengthy writing with specific images was most likely William Blake (1757–1826). Blake created several books in which the pictures and the "storyline" are inseparable, such as Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, the 1837 English translation of the 1833 Swiss publication Histoire de M. Vieux Bois by Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Töpffer, is the oldest recognized American example of comics used to this end. The United States has also had a long tradition of collecting comic strips into book form. While these collections and longer-form comic books are not considered graphic novels even by modern standards, they are early steps in the development of the graphic novel.
1920s to 1960s
The 1920s saw a revival of the medieval woodcut tradition, with Belgian Frans Masereel cited as "the undisputed king" of this revival. Among Masereel's works were Passionate Journey (1926, reissued 1985 as Passionate Journey: A Novel in 165 Woodcuts ISBN 978-0-87286-174-9). American Lynd Ward also worked in this tradition, publishing the first wordless, woodcut-picture novel, Gods' Man, in 1929 and going on to publish more 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, and Une Semaine de Bonté (1934), a novel in sequential images composed of collage by the surrealist painter Max Ernst. In 1941, author/illustrator Virginia Lee Burton published Calico the Wonder Horse, or the Saga of Stewy Slinker. Intrigued by her nine-year old son's fascination with comic books, she had tailored the book to his interest, creating an early graphic novel.
As the exact definition of graphic novel is debatable, the origins of the artform itself are open to interpretation. Cave paintings may have told stories, and artists and artisans beginning in the Middle Ages produced tapestries and illuminated manuscripts that told or helped to tell narratives.The first Western artist who interlocked lengthy writing with specific images was most likely William Blake (1757–1826). Blake created several books in which the pictures and the "storyline" are inseparable, such as Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, the 1837 English translation of the 1833 Swiss publication Histoire de M. Vieux Bois by Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Töpffer, is the oldest recognized American example of comics used to this end. The United States has also had a long tradition of collecting comic strips into book form. While these collections and longer-form comic books are not considered graphic novels even by modern standards, they are early steps in the development of the graphic novel.
1920s to 1960s
The 1920s saw a revival of the medieval woodcut tradition, with Belgian Frans Masereel cited as "the undisputed king" of this revival. Among Masereel's works were Passionate Journey (1926, reissued 1985 as Passionate Journey: A Novel in 165 Woodcuts ISBN 978-0-87286-174-9). American Lynd Ward also worked in this tradition, publishing the first wordless, woodcut-picture novel, Gods' Man, in 1929 and going on to publish more 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, and Une Semaine de Bonté (1934), a novel in sequential images composed of collage by the surrealist painter Max Ernst. In 1941, author/illustrator Virginia Lee Burton published Calico the Wonder Horse, or the Saga of Stewy Slinker. Intrigued by her nine-year old son's fascination with comic books, she had tailored the book to his interest, creating an early graphic novel.
The digest-sized "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust (1950), one precursor of the graphic novel. Cover art by Matt Baker and Ray Osrin.
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. In 1955, EC Comics devised the label "Picto-Fiction" when it attempted to graduate from the conventional comic book format to typeset graphic stories with a line of experimental magazines—Confessions Illustrated, Terror Illustrated, Shock Illustrated and Crime Illustrated. 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 and comic-book writer 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 era
Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin's Blackmark (1971), a science fiction/sword-and-sorcery paperback published by Bantam Books, did not use the term originally; the back-cover blurb of the 30th-anniversary edition (ISBN 978-1-56097-456-7) calls it, retroactively, "the very first American graphic novel". 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.
The first six issues of writer-artist Jack Katz's 1974 Comics and Comix Co. series The First Kingdom were collected as a trade paperback (Pocket Books, March 1978, ISBN 978-0-671-79016-5), which described itself as "the first graphic novel". Issues of the comic had described themselves 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".
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