Caitlin Campbell

EDWARD RUEDA

ENLARGE THIS IMAGE

According to conventional wisdom, the comic book store is the haven of the pale, the scrawny, and the adept with twelve-sided dice. Over the last few years, however, comics have gained ground in mainstream culture in the form of graphic novels. The term “graphic novel” is vague, confusing, and often irritating, even to those who create them. Generally speaking, it's a novel-length comic. According to From Hell illustrator and publisher Eddie Campbell, format has nothing to do with it. In his 2004 graphic novel manifesto, posted on a comics message board, he argues that “the term graphic novel shall not be taken to indicate a trade format...It can be in unpublished manuscript form, or serialized in parts. The important thing is the intent, even if the intent arrives after the original publication.” The intent, more and more frequently, involves relating day to day life rather than the adventures of superheroes, and this distinction has gained newer works (to the ire of many who create and enjoy more traditional comics) the laudatory epithet “literary”. Some of the most highly acclaimed of these “literary” graphic novels, like American Splendor, Persepolis and Epileptic, are not novels but memoirs.

With all these inconsistencies, the term “graphic novel” may be more useful as a marketing tool than an organizing concept. With their size comparable to conventional books and reassuring appropriation of the word “novel,” with all its implied legitimacy, graphic novels allow deeply closeted comic fans to remain in denial and hipsters to uphold their image as geeky-cool without straying into the undesirable realm of true geekdom.

Of course, it isn't the case that comics have suddenly burst into the mainstream. Art Spiegelman paved the way for the current memoirs with Maus, which started its run in Raw magazine in 1980. Maus garnered the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, proving that exemplary comics could be recognized as legitimate forms of artistic and literary expression over a decade ago. Maus has even found a place in academia, with Professor Rosalyn Deutsche assigning it for her course Memorials: The Art of Witness. She considers it an important “mnemonic representation of the Holocaust” in part because Spiegelman “openly reflects on the political and ethical differences of Holocaust representation, especially given the inevitable commodification of the Holocaust in mass culture.”

The difference now is that literary publishing houses have embraced graphic novels, marketing them to a wider audience as an adult product. It's no longer the case that a creator of a graphic novel must either appeal to big comic names like DC or Marvel, to smaller, independent houses, or else resort to self-publishing. Random House, Doubleday, Roaring Brook, Pantheon, Grove/Atlantic, and Simon and Schuster have all published graphic novels in recent years; some houses placing such confidence in the future of the genre that they've launched imprints specifically for graphic novels. At the 2005 Book Expo America in New York, an annual book industry circus held for publishers, literary agents, authors, librarians and booksellers, the response to a graphic novel panel so thoroughly overwhelmed planners' expectations that even after a change in venue, audience members were forced to sit in the aisle or linger in the hall outside. Arriving at the event late, panelist Frank Miller (famed for Sin City, which was adapted into a film earlier this year) was forced to wade through a sea of longtime fans, new converts drawn in by “literary” graphic novels, and professionals interested in the industry trend. The media's response to graphic novels has mirrored that of publishers. The New York Times Magazine has started to run a serialized graphic novel by Chris Ware, and even Entertainment Weekly now runs reviews of graphic novels, indisputable proof of their place in the mainstream.

And why not? Comics are, in essence, a combination of visual art and text. Though the genre has been most thoroughly explored as a vehicle for science fiction and adventure, there have always been titles that, if not for the pictures, would be categorized as general fiction. Why shouldn't they appeal to a broader audience, especially in a culture as visually oriented as ours?

The potential problem is that this proliferation of graphic novels might undermine their impact. The effectiveness of some of the best graphic novels arguably derives at least in part from shock value. Maus proves especially striking for its portrayal of Jews and Nazis as mice and cats, and its expression of almost unimaginable atrocities in a genre often considered juvenile or humorous. The more recent Persepolis is distinguished by its drawings from other narratives dealing with politics and oppression in Iran. The coupling of deeply traumatic and personal stories with a genre of images generally associated with men speeding through the air in brightly colored tights is jarring, and this defiance of expectations makes them memorable and affecting. Now that comics are the norm rather than the product of small groups at society's periphery, will they cease to be used in the same surprising way? Is the growth of graphic novels diluting the genre?

Probably not. If this year's batch of nominees for the Independent Booksellers' Quills award for graphic novels is any indication, the genre is doing just fine. Nominees include memoirs, with Persepolis II and American Splendor: Our Movie Year. Art Spiegelman returns to what he calls “the faultline where World History and Personal History collide” with his chronicle of post 9/11 paranoia, In the Shadow of No Towers. And among these tales of suffering and daily life, superheroes make their return in Marvel: 1602, Neil Gaiman's reimagining of some of Marvel's most famous characters in the England, Spain, and America of 1602. Silly as it may sound, the richly illustrated and adeptly told comic took the Quills award. It's perhaps 1602 that best demonstrates graphic novelists' new advantage. Surprise may no longer be on their side, but instead it's a growing tradition to work with and against. The wider, newfound audience really can't be considered too terrible a threat to the genre for appreciating visually interesting literature and challenging approaches to narrative, even if it does annoy everyone who liked comics before they were cool. At least they still have Dungeons and Dragons.