Graphic novel

Graphic novels arranged for sale in a specialized library.

Graphic novel is a comic format that contains a unitary narrative, where generally deep themes and extensive stories are presented. In addition, in a diachronic sense, it is an avant-garde movement of the 21st century heir of alternative comics with international circulation, which covers both American comics (Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Gary Panter, Joe Sacco, Seth) and French-speaking (Guy Delisle, Marjane Satrapi) and even Spanish (Paco Roca, Luis Durán...), Israeli (Rutu Modan) and Japanese (Jiro Taniguchi), whose central figure is Chris Ware. As such, it implies a revolution in the stories addressed, beyond the graphic revolution produced since the 1970s. It can be considered, in in this sense, "as the latest (so far) of the various attempts made by comics to assault the fortress of cultural respectability". All this polysemy has led to confusion and contradictions between the various authors, experts and ctors. The work El Eternauta (1957) by Héctor Germán Oesterheld is recognized as the first graphic novel; although the first self-proclaimed work as a graphic novel was Will Eisner's Contract with God (1978),

Comics in different places

In Spain

In Spain, the magazine Monos (1904-08) subtitled as "the first Spanish graphic novel" to the series Baby Mischief. Many years later, in 1948, the collection La novela gráfica, by Ediciones Reguera, began, whose advertising indicated

The graphic novel will give you the best novels of world literature through explained drawings. Each issue will contain the full argument of a novel of love, adventures, passion or intrigue, always dedicated to older people. Two numbers will appear a month.

Not only these romantic comics carried this name, but also the editions of superheroes and other American characters by Editorial Dólar from 1958. The expression "Novelas" (or "Stories") "Graphics for Adults" it was used as a subtitle for serials of vertical format and medium length that theoretically were aimed at "adults" readers.

These publications dominated the Spanish market from the mid-1960s, with the crisis of the landscape adventure notebook, until the start of the boom in adult comic magazines in the 1970s. Many publishers then used the format:

• Ferma: Lady (1958), Combat (1962), West (1963), Great Battles (1963), Agent 007 James Bond (1965), Extra combat (1965), Secret Agent (1966), Megaton (1966);
• Bruguera: Sissi. Graphic novels (1959), As of Hearts (1961), Celia (1963), Capricho (1963), Suspecha (1965), Fire line (1965), Calibre 44 (1966);
• Toray: Salome (1961), Graphic Novels of Bélic Haza (1961), Secret Brigade (1962), Classical Graphic Novels (1962), War stories (1962), Babette (1964), Sioux (1964), Espionage (1965), Nurses (1966), Hugs (1967), Robot 76 (1967);
• Semic: Eddie Constantine (1964), Cherie (1965), Poker (1965), The Holy (1965), Value (1965), Stories for not sleeping (1965);
• Rollan: FBI Adventures (1964), Graphic Romance(1965);
• Editions Vértice: Steel clasp (1964), Mytek (1965), Love Ye-Ye (1965), Select Adventure Vetice (1966), Kelly "Magic Eye" (1967), Spiderman (1967), The Iron Man (1969), Patrol X (1969), Spider-Man (1969), The Massa (1970), etc;
• Ibero Mundial": Ringo "Ley" (1965), Gringo (1970).

Those with a romantic theme went into decline before the competition of the fotonovela, which was not so limited by censorship, but publishers tending to the so-called "poverty market" soon joined the format:

• Boixher: K-2, secret agent (1966), Year 3,000 (1968), Steel Helmets (1969);
• Galaor: Bufalo Bill (1967), Decisive battles (1968), Hero-Man (1969), The Earth of the Future (1969);
• Petronio: Extra! (1969), Tampa (1970);
• Vilmar Editions: Caravan (1971), West (1971), Sergeant Tigre (1972).

Buru Lan also used it: Zagor (1971), Ben Bolt (1973).

In Mexico

In 1940 the magazine Pepín was already published as a weekly and later as a newspaper of "Graphic Novels"

Currently (2020), the Mexican Graphic Novel is going through a boom period largely supported by the state Young Creators and Tierra Adentro awards, among the key authors of the generation we can find Pau Márquez, Perro Prieto, Augusto Mora, Edgar Camacho, or the avant-garde artists Verde Agua, Camilo Cadena, among others.

In the United States

In the United States, the English term graphic-novel arose in the 1960s, along with other terms such as comic novel, graphic album, novel-in-pictures or visual novel. The first known occurrences of the term in the United States are as follows:

• November 1964: Richard Kyle uses it in CAPA-ALPHA n.o 2, a newsletter published by the Comic Amateur Press Alliance, making it back in his Fantasy Illustrated #5 of 1966.
• 1976:
  • On the cover of "Bloodstar", by Richard Corben, which adapted a story by Robert E. Howard;
  • In the counter-cover of George Metzger's "Beyond Time and Again" collection, originally published serially between 1967 and 1972, and
  • In Jim Steranko's "Chandler: Red Tide" prologue, although, in fact, it was rather an illustrated prose.
• 1978: On the cover of the soft cover version (but not on the hard top) of Will Eisner's "Constrate with God". According to Eisner, he was inspired to create the term in the novels in images published in the 1930s by Lynd Ward. The success of sales and criticism of the work popularizes, in any case, the term, becoming attributed to Eisner his invention, which would then create a certain polemic.

In 1982, the term was so popular that Marvel Comics Publishers would launch the Marvel Graphic Novel line, whose first issue would be The Death of Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin.

In Puerto Rico

Editorial El Antillano is a collective made up of writers, researchers, cartoonists, and graphic designers who specialize in graphic novels in Puerto Rico. Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez is the creator of the superheroine La Borinqueña. United States of Bananas is a graphic novel written by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi with Joakim Lindengren, about American capitalism. This graphic novel glimpses the fiscal and public debt crisis of Puerto Rico as the beginning of the disintegration of the "American Empire".

In France

By the 1980s, three French publishers had collections in which the word roman (novel) was applied to the comic. Flammarion's 'Romans BD' were distinguished from classical albums by their smaller size; "Roman graphique", from the Associated Humanoids, grouped together all the titles that were not part of a series; while on the "Romans (À Suivre)" side, by Casterman - a collection inspired by The Ballad of the Salty Sea by Hugo Pratt -, the stories were distinguished above all by its unusual length. Three collections, and three different concepts.

This term, along with others such as "Nouvelle Bande Dessinée" designates a good part of the works produced by the independent publishers that emerged from the nineties such as L'Association or Éditions Cornélius, as well as the works published by commercial publishers in imitation of the former.

In the 2000s, no collection will ever fall directly under the 'novel' banner, the term 'graphic novel' meanwhile it will be imposed as a generic category.

Travel and reconnaissance

First boom

Back in 1983, the specialist Javier Coma studied in one of his articles the evolution of the comic-novel through the following works:

• His Name is... Savage (Adventure House Press, 1968), and
• Blackmark (Bantam Books, 1971), both of Gil Kane;
• Tarzan of the monkeys (Watson Guptill, 1972) of Burne Hogarth;
• The First Kingdom (1974-86) by Jack Katz;
• Jungle Tales of Tarzan (1976), also Burne Hogarth;
• Schlomo Raven (1976) by Tom Sutton;
• Starfawn Stephen Fabian (1976);
• The ones already quoted Bloodstar of Richard Corben and
• Chandler: Red Marea by Jim Steranko (1976);
• Empire (1978) by Howard Chaykin;
• The Silver Surfer (1978) by Stan Lee/Jack Kirby;
• Contract with God (1978) Will Eisner;
• Sabre (1978) by Don McGregor/Paul Gulacy,
• The Stars My Destination Howard Chaykin (1979);
• Live in another planet (1979-80), Will Eisner;
• Swords of Heaven, Flowers of Hell Howard Chaykin (1980);
• Odyssey metamorphosis (1980) by Jim Starlin;
• Almuric (1980) by Roy Thomas/Tim Conrad, and
• Comanche Moon (1979) and
• The Texans (1982), both of Jaxson.

However, the works that started the first graphic novel boom, already in the 1980s, were published in serial form: Maus (1980), a biography of a Holocaust survivor made by Art Spiegelman who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992; the superhero comics Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Watchmen by Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons, both published by DC Comics in 1986

Second boom

At the beginning of the new century, there was a second boom in the graphic novel, already endorsed by non-conventional publishers and which mainly included works by new American authors such as Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Seth or Craig Thompson, and French-speaking authors., either Canadian (Pyongyang, by Guy Delisle, 2004), French (The Rise of the Great Evil by David B., 1996 or Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, 2000) or Swiss (Blue Pills by Frederik Peeters, 2001), generally with a costumbrista theme.

Several factors have led to this second boom:

• The extension of the specialized bookstores, and the entry of the comic bookstores in general and large surfaces, to the detriment of the kiosk.
• The impossibility of historietists to be regarded as great visual artists given their inadequacy to the economic and promotional mechanisms of "art institution", which would have prompted them to seek recognition in the literary sphere.
• The influence of the sleeve, which has helped the Western authors to lose fear of long-breath accounts.
• The technological improvement, which allows us to break the monopoly held in Europe by the albums of 48 to 64 pages, as a result of the paper restrictions derived from World War II.

This book format would thus allow, and in the words of Paco Roca

many more pages, a different narrative and a greater venue of different themes and graphic approaches.

Criticism

The term graphic novel is widely used by publishers and journalists, but has encountered resistance among authors and theorists:

Some of those considered representatives of the movement even look for alternative terms with which to designate their works: Comic strip-novel (Daniel Clowes), comic-strip biography (Chester Brown), picture novella (Seth), illustrated novel (Craig Thompson) or graphic memoir (David Heatley).

Some theorists consider the graphic novel to be indistinguishable from the traditional album. Others, such as the aforementioned Juan Antonio Ramírez, start from the premise that comics have been and are "great art" that it does not need to get hooked on other creative modalities to reach expressive maturity, emotion and quality. It should be noted that in France the comic strip has traditionally enjoyed greater respect and recognition than in other Western countries, as Alejandro Jodorowsky declares.

Frequently, the consideration of a comic as a graphic novel is due to commercial or prestige reasons, leaving such an attribution as something very subjective.