Grown up Comic Books

[llauranzoniii]

OMG!!!! I was telling my wife about Watchmen, had her watch the trailer with my son. You know how it says "Most celebrated Graphic Novel..." Well she says "Oh is that a grown up comic book?" :eek:

So how should I define a Graphic Novel?

It's hard enough having to explain my new obsessions with comics in general.

[Labor_Days]

Start by explaining how calling Watchmen a "Graphic Novel" is a cheap bid for credibility by the comic book industry.

[OwlBoy]

then say that almost all comics are for adults and that in fact that most of them aren't for written for kids at all


and then ask why everyone is standing around instead of eating hamburgers on jetskis

[miyamotofreak]

Just say a graphic novel is a comic book, and then proceed to tell her that like any other story telling medium, it's all grown up.

[JAFlanagan]

If I may....

A comic book is just a way to tell a story, that gets a bad rap as being juvenile. You wouldn't say TV is for kids or books are for adults, so comic books are for whatever kind of story you're telling, regardless of the targetted audience.

A graphic novel is a term used to fancify what is essentially a comic book. But if you're using sequential pictures with or without words to tell your story, it's a comic book.

I would say that something like Alex Robinson's Tricked is a graphic novel. It was never released in issues, and was written as a whole, such as with a prose novel.

However, I would also say it's just a long comic book.

Watchmen isn't an OGN, or Original Graphic Novel, because it came out in issues originally.

Anyway, your wife is operating under the false assumption, as many adults do, that comics are only for kids, and what I do every single day of my life is try to dispel that notion.

But I try not to take myself as seriously as I just sounded like I just came off. Damn...

[bgavino]

Start by explaining how calling Watchmen a "Graphic Novel" is a cheap bid for credibility by the comic book industry.

Oh yea I so agree with this. My boss refuses to refer to comic books as comic books he calls every thing a graphic novel and I don't know why. I got into a argument with my brother and a friend of his who also insisted that Watchmen was a graphic novel where as I insisted it was a comic book. I don't know why some people are afraid the call them comic books. As Josh stated comic books and graphic novels are two different things.

Bryan

[OwlBoy]

This argument always reminds me of this C.S. Lewis quote:

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

[Tad]

But I try not to take myself as seriously as I just sounded like I just came off. Damn...

It's okay, Josh. I just assumed you were saying it in an Ed Wynn voice. Not that serious at all.

"Clean cup, clean cup, move down!"

(Mad Hatter, Disney's Alice in Wonderland)

[straylightrise]

i think the best way to describe graphic novels is the very term itself. They are novels that are presented in a graphical form to combine the power of words and art. Graphic novels I would say have a gravity about them. I was never into comics (x-men or batman) but I love Sandman and all the other graphic novels that have come since Watchmen

[OwlBoy]

i think the best way to describe graphic novels is the very term itself. They are novels that are presented in a graphical form to combine the power of words and art. Graphic novels I would say have a gravity about them. I was never into comics (x-men or batman) but I love Sandman and all the other graphic novels that have come since Watchmen

But this type of definition is inherently flawed. As was said before most "graphic novels" are just collected runs not fully planned out novels. Preacher and Y: The Last Man were fully realized stories from beginning to end and they were monthly issues not singular novels. And all stories can have weight and gravity, even X-Men and Batman stories. Hell I'd wager that those two worlds have produced some of most serious comic book stories in their histories.

[deadspace]

i think the best way to describe graphic novels is the very term itself. They are novels that are presented in a graphical form to combine the power of words and art. Graphic novels I would say have a gravity about them. I was never into comics (x-men or batman) but I love Sandman and all the other graphic novels that have come since Watchmen

Sandman isn't a graphic novel though. It's a comic book that was first released in issues, which you can now buy collected in trade paperbacks.

[straylightrise]

exactly and so is Watchmen and all the other so called graphic novels. The term is a misnomer and just a really good marketing tool

[deadspace]

exactly and so is Watchmen and all the other so called graphic novels. The term is a misnomer and just a really good marketing tool

it's just that you seemed to be saying batman = a comic, sandman = graphic novel.

as Josh said, something like Alex Robinson's Tricked would be a graphic novel. However Box Office Poison by the same author isn't.

Basically, the way I thought it worked was:

Trade Paperback = A collection of single issue comics (this covers most books on the shelves really - Fables, Y The Last Man, The Walking Dead, Sandman etc)

Graphic Novel = Something that has never been released in single issues before (Tricked, Pride of Baghdad etc)

Alternatively, a tpb is simply a collection of comics and a graphic novel is a really long comic :D

[CAM!]

Yhe question is, does the fact that something is serialized make it more novelley or is it insistent on non-serialized release dates to ordain it as "graphic"

Is it about the intention of storytelling? regardless?

I'm telling a story, it has a beginning and an end

I'm telling a story it goes on forever...

[OwlBoy]

I thought the "graphic" part just referred to the art

[Tad]

Watchmen isn't an OGN, or Original Graphic Novel, because it came out in issues originally.


Despite your amusing Ed Wynn imitation, I woke up this morning and decided to take you seriously after all. This is for Deadspace too.

I say that mode of publication doesn't affect classification, content does.

Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens have been considered novels since their publication in book form but both stories were published in newspapers as serialized adventures.

Collecting a bunch of issues in a row doesn't make a novel but a novel can be published as several issues in a row. So Watchmen is a novel. It's a self contained story, conceived as such, published in issues because that what the market required at the time. Collected issues, even those telling a single story arc, often create subplots that are unfinished, designed to lure you into buying further issues.

Graphic Novel is both a useful description and a marketing tool. Whatever gets the comic into the hands of new readers is fine by me.

[Valoharth]

I say let people call it what they want, and call them on it if they use the name in a condecending term. Don't knock it until you try it.

[Labor_Days]

I decided to refer to single issues as "Chapters" rather than issues. And monthly titles as "Ongoing Novellas", natch.

Just so I can feel a little more classy as I read Crawlspace: XXXombies.

[deadspace]

I decided to refer to single issues as "Chapters" rather than issues. And monthly titles as "Ongoing Novellas", natch.

Just so I can feel a little more classy as I read Crawlspace: XXXombies.

lol!

if it stops raining i hope to pick up some chapters of some novels today :D

[georgexjr]

what the eff is the difference between a graphic novel and a trade paper back anyways?

nothing?

[horatio616]

Disappointed. Not one mention of Omaha the Cat Dancer.

[esophagus]

Collecting a bunch of issues in a row doesn't make a novel but a novel can be published as several issues in a row.
I've always thought of it this way.

Watchmen and Box Office Poison are graphic novels. This is why the term OGN exists. The original isn't for redundancy, it is to state that Graphic Novel was the original format. If Watchmen had been published all at once, we would have no problem calling it a Graphic Novel, so we shouldn't hold back because its publishing was staggered.

But things like Sandman and Y: The Last Man are comics through and through. You could publish them in one giant volume if you wished, and it wouldn't solve it. It wasn't the intention, nor is it the way the story flows, to be a novel. They are, and always will be, Trade Paperbacks, no matter how much calling it a Graphic Novel makes it easier and more acceptable to read.

[conanobrien]

I've always thought of it this way.

Watchmen and Box Office Poison are graphic novels. This is why the term OGN exists. The original isn't for redundancy, it is to state that Graphic Novel was the original format. If Watchmen had been published all at once, we would have no problem calling it a Graphic Novel, so we shouldn't hold back because its publishing was staggered.

But things like Sandman and Y: The Last Man are comics through and through. You could publish them in one giant volume if you wished, and it wouldn't solve it. It wasn't the intention, nor is it the way the story flows, to be a novel. They are, and always will be, Trade Paperbacks, no matter how much calling it a Graphic Novel makes it easier and more acceptable to read.

I still don't quite understand why a distinction between comics and graphic novels is really needed. I would still describe Something like Y: The Last Man as a graphic novel to someone if I thought it would help them understand what it is more easily. All graphic novel means to me is that there is a quality of art or story that differentiates itself from what the majority of people have deemed comics traditionally to be.

[Labor_Days]

There doesn't need to be a differential of quality. The very concept is an offense.

Graphic Novels, or more accurately, Original Graphic Novels- are intended from the start to read cover to cover and are created specifically for the collected format.

Trade Paperbacks collect the serialized issues of a particular work. The work was created with the format of single issues in mind first, to be read issue to issue.

Both use the medium of sequential storytelling. But the format and intent are not the same.

[deadspace]

I've always thought of it this way.

Watchmen and Box Office Poison are graphic novels. This is why the term OGN exists. The original isn't for redundancy, it is to state that Graphic Novel was the original format. If Watchmen had been published all at once, we would have no problem calling it a Graphic Novel, so we shouldn't hold back because its publishing was staggered.

But things like Sandman and Y: The Last Man are comics through and through. You could publish them in one giant volume if you wished, and it wouldn't solve it. It wasn't the intention, nor is it the way the story flows, to be a novel. They are, and always will be, Trade Paperbacks, no matter how much calling it a Graphic Novel makes it easier and more acceptable to read.

I dont really see the distinction. If Y The Last Man was published all at once rather than as single issues then it'd be an OGN surely.

Och who cares anyway? :D

[deadspace]

There doesn't need to be a differential of quality. The very concept is an offense.

Graphic Novels, or more accurately, Original Graphic Novels- are intended from the start to read cover to cover and are created specifically for the collected format.

Trade Paperbacks collect the serialized issues of a particular work. The work was created with the format of single issues in mind first, to be read issue to issue.

Both use the medium of sequential storytelling. But the format and intent are not the same.

I agree with this.

[OwlBoy]

All graphic novel means to me is that there is a quality of art or story that differentiates itself from what the majority of people have deemed comics traditionally to be.

The Lion King has a quality of art and story that differentiates itself from what the majority of people have deemed cartoons traditionally to be but its still called a cartoon. Why does it have to be different for the comics industry?

[esophagus]

I dont really see the distinction. If Y The Last Man was published all at once rather than as single issues then it'd be an OGN surely.

Och who cares anyway? :DYes, but it wasn't published all at once for a reason. It was meant to be read as independent arcs. My post essentially says the same things as Labors that you agree with.

[llauranzoniii]

Interesting posts and thanks for the discussions. I just tell my wife to shut her face and go back to scrapbooking.

[horatio616]

Interesting posts and thanks for the discussions. I just tell my wife to shut her face and go back to scrapbooking.

Let us know how that goes!