Terminology: Defining Graphic Novels
A major point of contention within the history of comics is over the term graphic novel. The overlap of the term with that of comics in being used to describe "works that use sequential images to tell stories" can cause confusion.1 Both terms refer to different formats that the comics medium is published and presented. Equating the terms, however, has invited much controversy ever since graphic novel first became popularized.
Although francophone Europe had best-selling book-form comic series (also known as comic albums) prior to the 70s, such as Les Aventures de Tintin (1929-1976), the majority of comics readers in the United States were not familiar with them—as American comics were either newspaper comic strips or newsstand comic books.2 However, by the mid-70s, the term graphic novel grew from obscurity to become "a catchword in the book trade," with the general public slowly becoming aware of the term since 1986 as media coverage of contemporary comics that were "breaking out of mainstream formats" increased.3
Although fan-writer Richard Kyle first used the term in a 1964 Comics Amateur Press Alliance newsletter, it was popularized by veteran cartoonist Will Eisner in the marketing of his 1978 comic A Contract with God as a graphic novel.4 According to Kyle, he used the terms graphic story and graphic novel to describe "outstanding comics"—the "artistically serious 'comic book strip.'"5 In 1968, Eisner expressed interest in "the so called 'graphic story,' … a whole novel in comic form,"6 later using the term to (unsuccessfully) pitch his book-length comic to Bantam Books,7 before eventually using it in the subtitle for the softcover edition of A Contract with God: "A Graphic Novel by Will Eisner."8 Primarily, the term served to (successfully) disassociate such works from the connotations of comic art as "juvenile entertainment and lowbrow escapism"—as had been occurring since the 70s in western Europe.9 Prior to the 2000s, the term was sometimes associated with violent or pornographic novels, which are possibilities, but the popularization of the term has made the compound noun more widely and accurately understood.10 Likewise, the term adult graphic novels refers to graphic novels for adult readers.
However, despite the historical popularization of the term, the sufficiency—and even accuracy—of graphic novel to describe vastly different kinds of comic works has been questioned since it became a widely used marketing term.11 Some argue that the term is an "unnecessarily pretentious way to designate comic books."12 Even major authors of graphic novels have expressed criticism of the term, such as Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman:
"It's a marketing term … 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 … stick[ing] 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? It was that that I think tended to destroy any progress that comics might have made in the mid-'80s." —Alan Moore13
"'Hang on, I know who you are. You're Neil Gaiman!' I admitted that I was. 'My God, man, you don't write comics,' he said. 'You write graphic novels!' He meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening." —Neil Gaiman14
Others argue for more precise terminology—graphic nonfiction or graphic memoir, for example—to cover acclaimed graphic novels such as Art Spiegelman's Maus and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, which (a) are not fiction and (b) are serious stories that warrant hesitation on calling them comics.15 Graphic narrative is another terminology suggestion that is more encompassing for all comics, and sometimes original graphic novels is used to distinguish graphic novels with previously unpublished content from reprinted serialized comic books (also known as trade paperbacks).16
Nevertheless, graphic novel remains an important and widely understood term to distinguish a specific format that the comics medium is published in. Steven Weiner, author of Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel, says, "Graphic novels, as I define them, are book-length comic books that are meant to be read as one story. This broad term includes collections of stories in genres such as mystery, superhero, or supernatural, that are meant to be read apart from their corresponding ongoing comic book storyline."17 Paul Gravett, author of Graphic Novels: Everything you Need to Know, says that you will find many answers to the question "So what are graphic novels?" in the thirty key graphic novel titles that he has shortlisted under the categorization of "Stories to Change Your Life."18 But Gravett also explains that he thinks that British comics artist Eddie Campbell "may be right when he says in his manifesto that the term 'graphic novel signifies a movement rather than a form"—in which the goal of the movement is "to take the form of the comic book, which has become an embarrassment, and raise it to a more ambitious and meaningful level."19
Notes
1 Zhao, "'Comics vs. 'Graphic Novels,'" "Definition."
2 Gabilliet, "History and Uses of the Term 'Graphic Novel,'" "Introduction."
3 Gabilliet, "Rise of a Trade Term"; "Introduction."
4 Zhao, "Introduction."
5 Gabilliet, "Introduction."
6 Quoted in Gabilliet, "Rise of a Trade Term."
7 Weiner, Faster Than a Speeding Bullet, 17.
8 Gabilliet, "Rise of a Trade Term."
9 Gabilliet, "Breaking into Bookstores and Mainstream Culture."
10 Zhao, "Introduction."
11 Zhao, "Introduction."
12 Gabilliet, "Impact."
13 Moore, "The Alan Moore Interview."
14 From an interview with Hy Bender, quoted in Camus, "Neil Gaiman's Sandman," 309.
15 Zhao, "Impact."
16 Zhao, "Impact"; "Further Distinctions."
17 Weiner, xi.
18 Gravett, Graphic Novels, 9.
19 Gravett, 9.
