Graphic Novel Precis

Eric Rosenfield

There is some debate about where the term "Graphic Novel" originally came from, some going so far as to trace it back to CAPA-ALPHA #2, a newsletter published by the Comic Amateur Press Alliance in 1964. However, the modern application of the phrase can generally be thought of as starting with Will Eisner in 1976, with his seminal Graphic Novel A Contract With God. The term refers to a long-form comic book – a comic book capable of the dimensions of a novel – and has more-or-less successfully allowed the idea of such a thing to pass beyond the stereotypes of non-comics-readers about comics as sub-literate child-fare about superheros. As it has grown and attracted more writers and artists (and especially writer/artists), it has become abundantly clear that the intent of the best Graphic Novel creators is make a literature as respectable and wide in scope as prose novels and cinema. However, one of the draw backs of the term becoming linked with comics' respectability is a often times simply inaccuracy – as with the aforementioned Contract which is actually a short story collection and not a novel at all -- short story collections and nonfiction are lumped in as "Graphic Novels" even though they are not, in fact, novels.

Since Contract there have been many significant Graphic Novels, including Maus by Art Speigelman, a memoir about Speigalman's father who was in a concentration camp, which won a special Pulitzer prize. Since Maus there seems to have been a division between books created for book store, literary fiction readers and ones made for a direct market, comic book store audience. Comic book store Graphic Novels tend to be more plot-driven, owing more to the super-hero fiction that comic book store readers grow up with, and are more often then not collections of material serialized in comic book format. An good example of this kind of Graphic Novel is the Preacher books by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, a rousing adventure series about a southern preacher who, though the escaped offspring of a demon and an angel, gains a power in which anything he tells someone to do, they must do unquestioningly. The character spends the series trying to track down God himself to make him answer for his crimes against humanity.

The book-store group is more overtly literary in its intent. It is exemplified by books like Ben Katchtor's The Jew of New York, a historical novel about Jews in America in the early twentieth century, and Safe Area Gorizade by Joe Sacco, a nonfiction treatment of Sacco's time in Bosnia. In some sense these books face an uphill battle, attempting to attract readers that don't normally read "comic books" and may have never heard of the Graphic Novel. However, Spiegelman, the patriarch of this group, has done much to make inroads into the world of the literati, especially through his long time position as art director for The New Yorker.

Many Graphic Novelists tread the line between these two groups, drawing on an "alternative comics" culture created by folks like R. Crumb, Spain and Harvey Pekar. The mainstay of this group from the early eighties onward has been the Love and Rockets comics by Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez. Love and Rockets, which ranges all over the map in terms of content but tends to focus on a magical realism exploration of Mexico and the Mexican-American experience, appealed to literary readers with its intelligence and sensitivity and more conventional comics readers with its strange and exciting plot-lines and the soap-opera-ish entanglements of its characters.

Then, in 1986 a bomb was dropped on the comic book store world in the form of Watchmen by writer Alan Moore with artist Dave Gibbons. Watchmen attempted to take superheros and ground them in a realistic world, turning their universe into an elaborate and intricate Systems Novel about politics, neurosis, insanity and fear. Watchmen proved that a serious book could sell well in the comic-book-store market and created the first truly major crossover between "alternative" comics readers and readers of superhero pulp. Since then, Alan Moore tried to go "all-the-way" into literary comics fiction, creating books like A Small Killing, Big Numbers and especially From Hell with Eddie Campbell, a mobius-strip of a book about Jack the Ripper that is probably the finest Graphic Novel ever created. From Hell met with limited sales between a book-store world that didn't know how to take or market Moore, and a comic book store world that seemed to still expect him to be doing stuff like Watchmen. In 2001 From Hell was made into a thoroughly mediocre movie that completely gutted the book and replaced its complicated storyline with something more widely palatable and formulaic. The movie has all but disappeared without any significant increase in the sales of the book. In the end, Moore, in order to make a living, was forced to go back to the "mainstream", superhero material, putting out marginally interesting, "fun" books like Tom Strong, Top Ten, Promethea, and the above average League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which was also made into a mediocre movie that gutted and missed the point of the original).

However, after Moore and the Hernandez Brothers, a new group of graphic novelists have cropped up, systematically winning over the "alternative" comics market in the book stores and then making active efforts to be sold in bookstores. This group includes some of the best creators working in the medium today, including Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine, Seth, Joe Matt and Chester Brown. Chris Ware's Jimmy Corigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, is a Madame Bovary-like exploration of an alienated, socially-awkward man looking for the father who abandoned him. Dan Clowes' David Boring is postmodern story of a twenty-something whose life swings wildly from stark realism to intense surrealism as he searches for a woman he is obsessed with in a world that may or may not be ending. Chester Brown's Louis Riel is a reverently accurate retelling of the life of Riel, a revolutionary who fought for the rights of French-speaking, Indian bi-racials in 19^th century Canada.

Also notable are the group who, like Grant Morrison, have tried to add literary values to "mainstream" comics and in the attempt have often created notable works. Chief among these is Neil Gaiman, whose Sandman series spun out little more than the name of a minor superhero character and transformed it into a China Miéville-like reinvention of the fantasy genre that ended up winning him the World Fantasy Award. Gaiman has since made the jump to prose novels, and his book American Gods won a recent Hugo award. Also to be noted is Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, an surreal, über-Systems Novel series about a group of occult warriors who comprise a massive conspiracy at war with another, counter-conspiracy (or perhaps they are a counter-conspiracy at war with a conspiracy) that have held global politics in the balance since the dawn of civilization. Throw in here as well, Peter Milligan's The Human Target, about a man who can disguise himself as any other person, personality included, who hires himself out to people who feel their life is in danger to impersonate them and route out the assassins (if only he didn't sometimes lose his own personality in the process).

All-in-all, the Graphic Novel suffers much of the same problems facing the conventional novel, namely the shrinking of its audience and the continuing difficulty of its creators to make a living at their craft. This problem is compounded by the lack of a University system to employ its practitioners, something which conventional novelists have. Graphic Novels are overall better now in quality than ever in the history of the medium, but with the continuing domination of people's entertainment/art-time by the Big Three popular media -- movies, television and video games – there remains a question of who in the future will be left to read them.

A partial reading list:

Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud – one of the few truly excellent books on the comics medium, and it's a Graphic Novel no less.

From Hell, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Maus, Art Spiegelman

The Blood of Palomar, Gilbert Hernandez

The Death of Speedy, Jaime Hernandez

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, Christ Ware

David Boring, Dan Clowes

Why I Hate Saturn, Kyle Baker

King David, Kyle Baker

Its a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, Seth

Louis Riel, Chester Brown

The Jew of New York, Ben Katchtor

Safe Area Gorezade, Joe Sacco

Summer Blonde, Adrian Tomine

Circling the Drain, Evan Dorkin

Fables and Recollections, Neil Gaiman and various

Preacher: Until the End of the World, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

The Human Target, Peter Milligan and Edvin Biukovic

Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street, by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

Life on Another Planet, Will Eisner

Age of Bronze: A Thousand Ships, Eric Shanowar

That Poor Bastard, Joe Matt

Jaka's Story, Dave Sim and Gerhard