iSteve
08-25-2008, 06:48 PM
Hey guys,
I was away for the weekend and came home to find that the Washington Post had a HUGE article in the Sunday edition about the growth of graphic novels in the publications industry. I will post part of the article here (it is too long to post in its entirety) and you can click through the hotlink on the article title to see the complete text.
Cheers,
Steve
__________________
Drawing Power (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082201263_pf.html)
By Bob Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 24, 2008; M01
NEW YORK -- I've wandered into an alternative universe, and I'm trying to decide if I want to stay. The setting is the lovely, old-fashioned library of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, in midtown Manhattan. The event is a gathering called "SPLAT! A Graphic Novel Symposium." I'm here because the organizers have promised to lay out, in the course of a single day, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Graphic Novels."
What I want to know is: How did this formerly ghettoized medium became one of the rare publishing categories that's actually expanding these days?
"SPLAT!" seems a perfect place to start looking for answers.
Sponsored by the New York Center for Independent Publishing, it's crammed with influential cartoonists, editors, agents, librarians, marketing types and booksellers. There will be talk of literary comics, autobiographical comics, Web comics, kids' comics, comics in libraries, comics in schools and much, much more. By day's end, my head will be buzzing with new knowledge on subjects ranging from the distribution revolution that helped make the graphic novel boom possible to the Manga Invasion from Japan.
Above all, "SPLAT!" is filled with enthusiastic voices.
What is a graphic novel?
"It's a perfect synthesis of artwork and literature!"
When will graphic novels come into their own?
"We seem to be in a golden age of comics publishing right now!"
And yet . . .
To a lifelong Prose Guy, whose idea of a good time involves a comfortable couch and a book full of nothing but words, the graphic novel galaxy can still feel far, far away.
Yes, I know comics can be ambitious and aimed at adults. Art Spiegelman's "Maus" made this indisputable two decades ago, and there has been plenty of impressive work done since. But I can't help wondering, even as I begin to explore the rise of what's sometimes called "sequential art," if I can ever overcome my personal bias toward prose.
Maybe Scott McCloud will help me sort this out.
I've been looking forward to the final "SPLAT!" offering, in which the man billed as "one of the great theorists of comics" will be holding forth. McCloud made his name 15 years ago with "Understanding Comics," a groundbreaking deconstruction of the cartoonist's art that itself takes the form of a 215-page graphic novel.
It's not really a novel, of course.
"Graphic novel" is "a goofy term," McCloud tells his listeners. "The first graphic novel that got a lot of play was Will Eisner's 'Contract With God.' The thing's an anthology. The next graphic novel that got a lot of play was 'Maus,' and it's a memoir. There are very few graphic novels that are actually graphic novels.
"What they are is a publishing shorthand that says: big fat comic with a spine -- and people get that."
Now McCloud is taking audience questions, and here comes one that seems aimed in my direction.
What about those still-numerous naysayers, he is asked, who resist the idea that books filled with word balloons should be taken as seriously as pure prose? Isn't there a way to educate those annoying old fogies -- perhaps through some kind of "adult literacy campaign for comics"?
Sounds good to me. After all, isn't education what I'm here for?
McCloud offers a different perspective. Some people will never get it, he says.
"And it's okay. They'll die." ......
(Click title for rest of story)
I was away for the weekend and came home to find that the Washington Post had a HUGE article in the Sunday edition about the growth of graphic novels in the publications industry. I will post part of the article here (it is too long to post in its entirety) and you can click through the hotlink on the article title to see the complete text.
Cheers,
Steve
__________________
Drawing Power (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082201263_pf.html)
By Bob Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 24, 2008; M01
NEW YORK -- I've wandered into an alternative universe, and I'm trying to decide if I want to stay. The setting is the lovely, old-fashioned library of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, in midtown Manhattan. The event is a gathering called "SPLAT! A Graphic Novel Symposium." I'm here because the organizers have promised to lay out, in the course of a single day, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Graphic Novels."
What I want to know is: How did this formerly ghettoized medium became one of the rare publishing categories that's actually expanding these days?
"SPLAT!" seems a perfect place to start looking for answers.
Sponsored by the New York Center for Independent Publishing, it's crammed with influential cartoonists, editors, agents, librarians, marketing types and booksellers. There will be talk of literary comics, autobiographical comics, Web comics, kids' comics, comics in libraries, comics in schools and much, much more. By day's end, my head will be buzzing with new knowledge on subjects ranging from the distribution revolution that helped make the graphic novel boom possible to the Manga Invasion from Japan.
Above all, "SPLAT!" is filled with enthusiastic voices.
What is a graphic novel?
"It's a perfect synthesis of artwork and literature!"
When will graphic novels come into their own?
"We seem to be in a golden age of comics publishing right now!"
And yet . . .
To a lifelong Prose Guy, whose idea of a good time involves a comfortable couch and a book full of nothing but words, the graphic novel galaxy can still feel far, far away.
Yes, I know comics can be ambitious and aimed at adults. Art Spiegelman's "Maus" made this indisputable two decades ago, and there has been plenty of impressive work done since. But I can't help wondering, even as I begin to explore the rise of what's sometimes called "sequential art," if I can ever overcome my personal bias toward prose.
Maybe Scott McCloud will help me sort this out.
I've been looking forward to the final "SPLAT!" offering, in which the man billed as "one of the great theorists of comics" will be holding forth. McCloud made his name 15 years ago with "Understanding Comics," a groundbreaking deconstruction of the cartoonist's art that itself takes the form of a 215-page graphic novel.
It's not really a novel, of course.
"Graphic novel" is "a goofy term," McCloud tells his listeners. "The first graphic novel that got a lot of play was Will Eisner's 'Contract With God.' The thing's an anthology. The next graphic novel that got a lot of play was 'Maus,' and it's a memoir. There are very few graphic novels that are actually graphic novels.
"What they are is a publishing shorthand that says: big fat comic with a spine -- and people get that."
Now McCloud is taking audience questions, and here comes one that seems aimed in my direction.
What about those still-numerous naysayers, he is asked, who resist the idea that books filled with word balloons should be taken as seriously as pure prose? Isn't there a way to educate those annoying old fogies -- perhaps through some kind of "adult literacy campaign for comics"?
Sounds good to me. After all, isn't education what I'm here for?
McCloud offers a different perspective. Some people will never get it, he says.
"And it's okay. They'll die." ......
(Click title for rest of story)