Graphic novel

Graphic novel is a term for a kind of comic book, usually with long and fairly complex storylines and often aimed at more mature audiences. However, the term is not strictly delimited, and can be notoriously difficult to pin down. It is often used to imply subjective distinctions in artistic quality between graphic novels and other kinds of comics which can be quite controversial. Graphic novels often encompass several separate issues of comic books and can be published over a period of several months or years and then republished in larger volumes.

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The term is commonly used to disassociate works from the juvenile and/or humorous connotations of the terms "comics" and "comic book". It implies that the work is more serious, mature, and/or literary than traditional comics. Following the reasoning behind this distinction, the French term "Bande Dessinée" is occasionally applied to certain comic books - mostly by art historians and those creators and critics who are schooled in the fine arts - in order to further dissociate fine art from popular entertainment. The usage is hotly contested, even though it is mostly limited to those same fine arts university departments. Other roughly synonymous terms, preferred by some to avoid the connotation of indecency in the word "graphic", are "drawn book" and "visual novel".

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Particularly in the book trade, the term is sometimes extended to include material that would not be considered a "novel" if produced in another medium. Collections of comic book issues that do not form a single continuous story, anthologies of short loosely-related pieces (by a single creator or even by multiple creative teams), and even non-fiction are stocked by libraries and bookstores as "graphic novels". It is also used sometimes in contradistinction to "trade paperback", to emphasize that the work was created as a single, complex, but finite narrative, and not just collected arbitrarily from an ongoing melodrama. Whether or not 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, book-length comics have been commonly published in hardcover volumes since the end of the 19th century (Franco-Belgian comics such as Tintin and Lieutenant Blueberry, but also Italian ones such as Corto Maltese), so the distinction between graphic novels and the other forms of comic books is even less clear there.

Related Topics:
Anthologies - Non-fiction - Melodrama - Manga - Franco-Belgian comics - Tintin - Lieutenant Blueberry - Corto Maltese

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