The rise in graphic novels also coincided with the development of the “direct market” for American comic books, which led to our friendly local comic shops of today. Not what the term would later describe.īlackmark, a sci-fi sword-and-sorcery tale by Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin, is closer to what we think of as a graphic novel today, though it didn’t use the term until years later, when the back-cover of the 30th-anniversary edition proclaimed it “the very first American graphic novel.” These, however, were fundamentally serialized stories, told in the pages of individual comics. Some have argued that title should go to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange, which ran for 17 issues of Strange Tales between 1965 and ’66, while others have claimed that the honor goes to “Panther’s Rage,” the first known multi-issue story arc that had its own title, which ran from 1973 to ’75 in the pages of Black Panther. Within the comic book industry, graphic novels are often distinguished from what are known as “trade paperbacks” or “trades” by the fact that the graphic novel is published first as a book, rather than serialized in individual issues, whereas trades are usually collections of comics that were previously published as single issues.Įisner’s A Contract with God may have been notable for its use of the term in its branding, but there have been numerous claims put forward as to what was the first “American graphic novel.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “a fictional story that is presented in comic-strip format and published as a book.” So, just what is a graphic novel? Despite the widespread use of the term in the last half-century, its definition has never really become fixed. RELATED: Groundbreaking Graphic Novels and Comic Book Series In fact, the oldest example might well be an 1837 publication by Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Topffer, published in English as The Adventures of Mr. Yet, the form that the term describes had already been in existence for years before Kyle coined the definition. In short order, it was followed by Marvel’s Graphic Novel line, which were published in oversized formats similar to the “albums” in which French and other European comics were frequently collected. Will Eisner’s famous A Contract with God, published in 1978, was one of the earliest works to use the term in its branding, and helped to popularize it among comic book fans. The term “ graphic novel” was first coined in 1964, by fan historian Richard Kyle. As the medium changed over time, evolving to tell different kinds of stories and appeal to different audiences, the terminology that we use to describe it has changed, too. In fact, most of the top-grossing movies of the last decade have been comic book adaptations. Comic books might once have been seen as kids’ stuff, but these days they’re big business.
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