By Any Other Name, Part Two

What do Citizen Kane, The Matrix, and Meet the Spartans have in common?

What do War & Peace, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and The Destroyer Volume 11: Kill or CURE have in common?

What do Persepolis, Jack Staff, and Tyrese Gibson’s MAYHEM! have in common?

I imagine the answer to the first two questions is obvious to pretty much anyone who’s familiar with films and novels.¹ Unfortunately, I don’t need to imagine getting into an argument over what I believe is the obvious answer to the third.

I understand why Will Eisner came up with² the term/format of the “graphic novel.” He wanted a “real” book publisher to publish his comics³. Comics at the time carried the stigma of being throw-away entertainment for kids. Getting a traditional novel publisher interested meant convincing one or more of them that the comics being offered up for publication were, in fact, something other than comics.

Fair enough. I’d call my feet tits if I thought it’d convince someone to give me money to touch them. I’m not proud.⁴ But I’d like to think that when I got out of the long, scalding hot shower I’d take after having whatever’s at the ends of my legs fondled, I’d be able to recognize that my feet aren’t breasts.

It’s frustrating to me to see writers and artists I respect giving more than the minimum lip service required to the notion that their work in the medium of comics is something other than comics work.

In his (Revised) Graphic Novel Manifesto, Eddie Campbell states: “The goal of the graphic novelist is to take the form of the comic book, which has become an embarrassment, and raise it to a more ambitious and meaningful level.”

(EDITED TO ADD: I’ve since been informed by someone who’d know that the Manifesto in question is intended as a work of comedy–a context I’m embarrassed to admit I missed due to clearly insufficient research on my part. I thank Mr. Campbell for clarifying the matter in the comments {which anyone who can be bothered to read my blathering should definitely check out}, and apologize for inadvertently misrepresenting his position.)

I’m all for more ambitious and meaningful comics. And I can even see how someone of Campbell’s stature could perceive a medium that includes the work of Alex Toth, Jack Kirby, and Bernie Krigstein, among many, many others, an embarrassment, irrevocably connected in the public’s mind with the stereotypical “Biff! Bam! Pow!” Adam West Batman image as it seemingly is, even to this day. The still widespread perception that comics are for kids is problematic (most North American comics not being for kids is also problematic for entirely different reasons, but that’s another post.)

I submit to you that the solution to the problem isn’t to create a new term for comic books,⁵ but to create more and better work in the comic medium–while making sure as many people as possible know that’s the medium the work is in.

As a comic book, From Hell elevates the comic book medium. As a graphic novel, it diminishes the comic book medium, in the same way Margaret Atwood insisting A Handmaid’s Tale isn’t science fiction diminishes science fiction. Both situations encourage those who don’t know what a comic/sci-fi is to believe the comics/sci-fi they’re consuming is something else. They are given no incentive to seek out good comics or sci-fi, because they aren’t interested in comics and sci-fi. The fact that they just enjoyed those very things is immaterial to their future reading choices, because they don’t understand what they just read was the very thing they’re predisposed to believe they’ve no interest in reading.

That’s not entirely an apples to apples comparison, as comics are a medium and science fiction is a genre⁶. But the point is that some comics will be embarrassing to people who want their comic work taken seriously for its literary or artistic merit for as long as there are comics. And whatever necessarily arbitrary distinction one tries to make between comics and graphic novels won’t change the fact that there will be some graphic novels that will embarrass creators who want their graphic novel work taken seriously for its artistic or literary merit, too. Because the distinction is arbitrary, and it’s an arbitrary distinction I suspect many would be unwilling, unable, or simply unprepared to make, even if there were widespread agreement on what the distinction should be⁷.

A year or two back, I was contacted about editing a series of graphic novels for a corporate client. Each of the graphic novels was to contain a central theme educating the reader about the client’s product; each was to reveal that theme in a humourous way; and each graphic novel was to consist of a row of three to four panels.

I tried to explain to the client that what they were describing would more accurately be called a comic strip. The client was quite insistent that they didn’t want comics, strips or otherwise. They wanted graphic novels. Four panel graphic novels.

That’s what those who’ve tried to elevate comics to the level of serious literature by creating a new and, from an artistic standpoint, unnecessary term have gotten from the public for their effort: a complete lack of any recognition of a qualitative (or even quantitative) difference between a graphic novel, a comic book, a trade paperback, and/or a comic strip.⁸

At the end of his Manifesto, Campbell returns the idea of the graphic novel to its original context, that of a marketing tool–a context in which the term had, and continues to have, a positive value for the comics creator. Says Mr. Campbell: “The graphic novelist reserves the right to deny any or all of the above if it means a quick sale.”

The use of the term graphic novel to describe comics has enabled a huge number of sales, to publishers, potential readers, and the Hollywood moneyhandlers who arguably keep the North American comics industry solvent (or at least inspire people to continue creating and publishing work inside it, if only for the worst reasons.) But at the end of the day, a graphic novel’s just another word for a comic book.⁹

There are more and better comics being made today than ever before. Instead of being embarrassed by those examples of the medium that display modest (or no) ambition, I’d prefer comics creators acknowledge what’s gone before, celebrate what’s been accomplished in the medium so far, and embrace the possibilities of what’s yet to come.

Unless, of course, doing so would interfere with a quick sale. In that case, here’s your four panel graphic novel; where’s my cheque?

-Foley ¹⁰

1. For those who aren’t familiar with those things, the answers are “They’re all films” and “They’re all novels” respectively; “They’re all stories told in the same medium” is a perfectly reasonable answer to both.
2. or co-opted, depending on whose version of events you believe
3. Considering the way comics creators were treated by the major comics companies of the time, you really can’t blame him.
4. I’m also not wealthy.
5. though that ship’s already sailed and it ain’t coming back to the dock.
6. regardless of what my local mass market bookstore thinks
7. and there isn’t, as far as I can tell
8. Well, that and a shelf at the local chain bookstore, a topic I may revisit in a future post if some politician fails to say something suitably moronic in the next few weeks.
9. At least in Canada and the United States. Over in his blog, Campbell has suggested the term “comic book” may carry substantially more baggage in a European context than it does in the one I tend to experience it in.
10. “Co-writer” of the “graphic novel” Cowboys & Aliens. Which we still don’t talk about.