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Comics work created and published as a single narrative, without prior appearance in Magazines , comic books or Newspapers , are called original graphic novels ('''OGN'''). The evolving term "graphic novel" is not strictly defined, and is sometimes used, controversially, to imply subjective distinctions in artistic quality between graphic novels and other kinds of comics. It is commonly used to disassociate works from the juvenile or humorous connotations of the terms "comics" and "comic book", implying that the work is more serious, mature, or Literary than traditional comics. Following this reasoning, the French term " Bande Dessinée " is occasionally applied, by Art Historians and others schooled in Fine Arts , to dissociate comic books in the fine-art tradition from those of popular entertainment. In the Publishing trade, the term is sometimes extended to material that would not be considered a Novel if produced in another medium. Collections of comic books that do not form a continuous story, Anthologies or collections of loosely related pieces, and even Non-fiction are stocked by Libraries and Bookstores as "graphic novels" (similar to the manner in which dramatic stories are included in "comic" books). Whether Manga , which has had a much longer history of both novel-like publishing and production of comics for adult audiences, should be included in the term is not always agreed upon. Likewise, in continental Europe, collections of Comic Strips have been commonly published in hardcover volumes, often called "albums", since the end of the 19th century (including Franco-Belgian Comics such as Tintin and Lieutenant Blueberry , and Italian comics such as Corto Maltese ). HISTORY Comics have long been collected into book form, with strips starring the British character Ally Sloper having been collected as early as 1873 in the United Kingdom. The United States has also had a long tradition of collecting comic strips into book form, and of producing "bumper editions". Whilst these collections and longer-form comic books are not considered graphic novels even by modern standards, they show the presence of an audience for such works, and can be thought of as early steps in the development of the graphic novel. Antecedents: 1920s to 1960s and Ray Osrin.]] The 1920s saw a revival of the also worked in this tradition during the 1930s, and such works have been described by Eddie Campbell as "'antecedents of the graphic novel', which is to say they that they are not comics proper but an early intimation of that particular type of comic we call the graphic novel" Other prototypical examples from this period include Milt Gross ', ''He Done Her Wrong'' (1930), a wordless comic published as a hardcover book. That same year, the first European comic-strip collections, called "albums", debuted with ''The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets''. The 1940s saw the launching of '' Classics Illustrated '', a comic-book series that primarily adapted notable, Public Domain novels into standalone comic books for young readers. The 1950s saw this format broadened, with popular movies being similarly adapted. By the 1960s, British publisher IPC had started to produce a pocket-sized comic book line, the "Super Library", that featured war and Spy Stories told over roughly 130 pages. In 1950, St. John Publications produced the digest-sized, adult-oriented "picture novel" ''It Rhymes with Lust'', a Film Noir -influenced slice of steeltown life starring a scheming, manipulative redhead named Rust. Touted as "an original full-length novel" on its cover, the book by Pseudonymous writer "Drake Waller" ( Arnold Drake and Leslie Waller ), penciler Matt Baker and inker Ray Osrin proved successful enough to lead to an unrelated second picture novel, ''The Case of the Winking Buddha'' by Pulp Novelist Manning Lee Stokes and illustrator Charles Raab . By the late 1960s, American comic book creators were becoming more adventurous with the form. produced '' The Adventures Of Luther Arkwright '' as a three-volume graphic-novel series published from 1982-87.--> and Artist -plotter Gil Kane .]] Meanwhile, in continental Europe, the tradition of collecting serials of popular strips such as '' Tintin '' or '' Asterix '' had allowed a system to develop which saw works developed as long form narratives but pre-published as serials; by the 1970s this move in turn allowed creators to become marketable in their own right, Auteurs capable of sustaining sales on the strength of their name. Modern form and term Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin's '' Blackmark '' (1971), a Science Fiction / Sword-and-sorcery paperback published by Bantam, did not use the term originally; the back-cover blurb of the 30th-anniversary edition (ISBN 1560974567) calls it, retroactively, "the very first American graphic novel." The Academy Of Comic Book Arts presented Kane with a special 1971 Shazam Award for what it called "his paperback comics novel". Whatever the nomenclature, ''Blackmark'' is a 119-page story of comic-book art, with captions and Word Balloons , published in a traditional book format. (It is also the first with an original heroic-adventure character conceived expressly for this form.) European creators were also experimenting with the longer narrative in comics form; in the United Kingdom, Raymond Briggs was producing works such as '' Father Christmas '' (1972) and '' The Snowman '' (1978), which he himself described as being from the "bottomless abyss of strip cartooning", although they, along with such other Briggs works as the more mature '' When The Wind Blows '' (1982), have been re-marketed as graphic novels in the wake of the term's popularity. Briggs notes, however, "I don't know if I like that term too much". {Link without Title} Regardless, the term in 1975 appeared in connection with three separate works. '''' (1976) by Jim Steranko , designed to be sold on Newsstands , used the term "graphic novel" in its introduction and "a visual novel" on its cover, although ''Chandler'' is more commonly considered an Illustrated Novel than a work of Comics . The following year, Terry Nantier, who had spent his teenage years living in Paris, returned to the United States and formed Flying Buttress Publications, later to incorporate as NBM, and published ''Racket Rumba'', a 50-page spoof of the Noir - Detective genre, written and drawn by the single-name French artist Loro. Nantier followed this with Enki Bilal's '' The Call Of The Stars ''. The company marketed these works as "graphic albums" {Link without Title} Similarly, '''' by writer Don McGregor and artist Paul Gulacy ( Eclipse Books , Aug. 1978) — the first graphic novel created for and sold in the newly created " Direct Market " of United States comic-book shops — was called a "graphic album" by the author in interviews, though he dubbed it "comic novel" on its credits page. "Graphic album" was also the term used the following year by Gene Day for his hardcover short-story collection ''Future Day'' (Flying Buttress Press). .]] Another of the other modern graphic novels, though it carried no self-description, was ''The Silver Surfer'' ( Simon & Schuster /Fireside Books, Aug. 1978), by Marvel Comics' Stan Lee and Jack Kirby . Significantly, this was published by a traditional book publisher and distributed through bookstores. Adoption of the term The term "graphic novel" began to be popularized two months later after it appeared on the cover of Trade Paperback edition (though not the Hardcover edition) of Will Eisner 's groundbreaking '' A Contract With God, And Other Tenement Stories '' (Oct. 1978). This collection of Short Stories was a mature, complex work focusing on the lives of ordinary people in the real world, and the term "graphic novel" was intended to distinguish it from traditional Comic Book s, with which it shared a storytelling medium. This established both a new book-publishing term and a category distinct from paperback, although Eisner cited Lynd Ward's 1930s woodcuts (see above) as an inspiration. The critical and commercial success of ''A Contract with God'' helped to establish the term "graphic novel" in common usage, and many sources have incorrectly credited Eisner with being the first to use it. In fact, it was used as early as November 1964 by Richard Kyle in ''CAPA-ALPHA'' #2, a newsletter published by the Comic Amateur Press Alliance, and again in Kyle's ''Fantasy Illustrated'' #5 (Spring 1966). One of the earliest contemporaneous applications of the term post-Eisner came in 1979, when ''Blackmark'''s sequel — published a year after ''A Contract with God'' though written and drawn in the early 1970s — was labeled a "graphic novel" on the cover of Marvel Comics' black-and-white comics magazine ''Marvel Preview'' #17 (Winter 1979), where ''Blackmark: The Mind Demons'' premiered — its 117-page contents intact, but its panel-layout reconfigured to fit 62 pages. Following this, Marvel from 1982-88 published the ''Marvel Graphic Novel'' line of 10"x7" trade paperbacks — although numbering them like comic books, from #1 ( Jim Starlin 's '' The Death Of Captain Marvel '') to #35 ( Denny O'Neil , Mike Kaluta , and Russ Heath 's ''Hitler's Astrologer'', starring the Radio and Pulp Fiction character the Shadow , and, uniquely for this line, released in hardcover). Marvel commissioned original graphic novels from such creators as John Byrne , J. M. DeMatteis , Steve Gerber , graphic-novel pioneer McGregor, Frank Miller , Bill Sienkiewicz , Walt Simonson , Charles Vess , and Bernie Wrightson . While most of these starred Marvel Superheroes , others, such as Rick Veitch 's ''Heartburst'' featured original SF/fantasy characters; others still, such as John J. Muth 's '' Dracula '', featured adaptations of literary stories or characters; and one, Sam Glanzman 's ''A Sailor's Story'', was a true-life, World War II Naval tale. (left) and U.K. (right) collected editions of ''Watchmen'', published by DC Comics and Titan Books ]] In England, Titan Books held the license to reprint strips from '' 2000 AD '', including '' Judge Dredd '', beginning in 1981, and '' Robo-Hunter '', 1982. The company also published British collections of American graphic novels — including '' Swamp Thing '', notable for being printed in black and white rather than in color as originally — and of British newspaper strips, including '' Modesty Blaise '' and '' Garth ''. '' (1986), a collection of Frank Miller's four-part comic-book series featuring an older Batman faced with the problems of a dystopian future; and '' Watchmen '' (1987), a collection of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons ' 12-issue Limited Series that used the superhero archetype as a metaphor for the dynamics of power in the atomic age {Link without Title} . These three works were reviewed in newspapers and magazines and led to such increased coverage that the headline "Comics aren't just for kids anymore" became widely regarded by fans as a mainstream-press cliché [http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=57&aid=70817 . Regardless, the mainstream coverage led to increased sales, with ''Batman: The Dark Knight Returns'', for example, lasting 40 weeks on a U.K. best-seller lists. (Campbell, 96) QUOTES Charles McGrath (former editor, '', in particular — and have put up mainstream sales numbers. '' Persepolis '', for example, Marjane Satrapi 's charming, poignant story, drawn in small black-and-white panels that evoke Persian miniatures, about a young girl growing up in Iran and her family's suffering following the 1979 Islamic Revolution , has sold 450,000 copies worldwide so far; '' Jimmy Corrigan '' sold 100,000 in hardback...." ARTISTIC MOVEMENT Eddie Campbell has issued a Manifesto (2004) to the effect that the "graphic novel" is more the product of an artist, and that it follows that the term is therefore better used as a description of an Artistic Movement . Members of the movement are known as "Graphic Novelists". Campbell defines the major goal of the movement as being "to take the form of the comic book, which has become an embarrassment, and raise it to a more ambitious and meaningful level." Campbell sees the movement as drawing on many antecedents, notably Woodcut novels, such as those by Lynd Ward , but does not wish the movement to be applied in relation to such antecedents. Further, Campbell rejects the notion that the term can be applied to the form of the work with any objective meaning, beyond those necessary for marketing purposes. CRITICISM Some in the comics community have objected to the term "graphic novel" on the grounds that it is unnecessary, or that its usage has been corrupted by commercial interests. , author of the serialized comics study ''A Thousand Flowers'', note a distinction between graphic novels and Trade Paperback collections, writing about them separately ("Of course, graphic novels — like trade paperbacks, which we'll get into next time....") {Link without Title} . As a result of this dissatisfaction, some alternative cartoonists have coined their own terms to describe extended comics narratives. For example, the cover of Daniel Clowes ' book ''Ice Haven'' describes the book as "a comic-strip novel". When The Comics Journal asked the cartoonist Seth why he added the subtitle "A Picture Novella" to his comic '' It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken '', he responded, "I could have just put 'a comic book'... It goes without saying that I didn't want to use the term graphic novel. I just don't like that term." SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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