After the Graphic Novel
JACOBSON, SID
Evolution of an Art Form After the Graphic Nove l By Sid Jacobson “I T’S A GIANT LEAP from Jughead to The 9/11 Report,” began an article in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post just about a...
...TODAY an increasing number of publishers are eager to bring out graphic f iction, libraries and bookstores have set up separate sections for it, and it is being accorded literary awards...
...They also spread into other fields...
...Books f itting this def inition and included in Time magazine’s 2005 list of the 10 best graphic novels are: Bone by Jeff Smith...
...The Yellow Kid’ s instant success intensified a rivalry between the W o r l d and its main newsstand competitor, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal...
...They were more mature and complex than anything that had ever appeared in comics and showed, rather masterfully, how the medium could be expanded...
...Among them are V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd...
...The price was one thin dime...
...It went onto describe a book employing the comics medium to illuminate an important national document, set for publication in hardcover by Farrar, Straus, Giroux and paperback by its Hill and Wang subsidiary...
...The post-Eisner entries, after all, have included a broad range of topics and techniques...
...In adapting the 500-page original, we kept its structure intact and hewed as closely as we could to its language...
...Others have been the source of wellreceived movies...
...Which brings us to a basic question: What exactly is a graphic novel...
...and The Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Kim Deitch...
...Soon there were two Yellow Kids—Outcault’s, now in the Journal, and the one still in the Wo r l d , drawn by George Luks...
...he said, laughing...
...He and his cohort quickly stole the hearts of New Yorkers, many of whom saw them as replicas of what they had once had been...
...Superheroes and fantasy creatures have turned up in extended adventures...
...Meanwhile, a host of new comics were introduced at a breathtaking pace: The Katzenjammer Kids (and later its imitation, The Captain and the Kids, featuring the very same characters), Happy Hooligan, Alphonse and Gaston, Mutt and Jeff, Buster Brown, Bringing Up Father, Krazy Kat, and, of course, the incomparable Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay...
...It is a measure of the esteem he earned that the industry’s top honors, presented every summer since 1988 at the San Diego Comic Convention, are the Eisner Awards...
...Publishers responded by developing titles for readers in their late teens and early 20s, while gradually giving up those for the younger set...
...Fashioned more for adults than children, they remained a valuable feature of American newspapers throughout the bulk of the 20th century...
...In 1978 he wrote A Contract With God, actually a collection of four semiautobiographical short stories about tenement life...
...I vividly recall Ernie’s first words following an exhilarating meeting with our publishers, for whom we are at work on two more graphic nonfiction books...
...The fracas gave birth to the term “yellow journalism,” which defined the sensationalism and lies of this newspaper war during the closing years of the 19th century—and, it will be recalled, produced a real war in Cuba...
...and perhaps the biggest moneymaker, this year’s 300, by Frank Miller...
...ALTHOUGHthe colored Sunday newspaper sections were certainly pointed at juvenile readers, comic books were what appealed to kids...
...Though a notable accomplishment, it was not written or designed for adults, nor did it initiate a whole new genre à la A Contract With God...
...They had already been trading on overzealous headlines and exaggerated news stories in matches for circulation superiority...
...Some sources cite the Gil KaneArchie Goodwin 119-page paperback, Blackmark, issued in 1971, as the first graphic novel...
...Sin City by Frank Miller...
...original crime, suspense and supernatural works have ushered in new personalities...
...Hence Batman, Captain America, The Sub-Mariner, Green Lantern, The Blue Beetle, The Black Cat, The Spectre, Shock Gibson, Wonder Woman, and the especially successful Captain Marvel...
...It is perhaps easiest to say a graphic novel is fiction intended for adults in comic format...
...Who knew...
...I thought that was a wonderful idea...
...Watchmen b y Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons...
...Years ago Ernie and I had worked together at Harvey Comics and Marvel Comics...
...Another consequence of this dynamic was the birth of a new form of the medium, called the graphic novel...
...Since he currently lives on Long Island and I live in Los Angeles, the bulk of our collaboration took place online...
...He was immediately embraced by kids across the United States with the excitement that Elvis Presley and the Beatles would stir in later generations...
...comics could shed light on aspects of the document that words alone could not...
...In the summer of 2005, a year after The 9/11 Commission Report was completed and issued as a book, Ernie Colón, an artist friend, phoned to suggest that we do a graphic treatment of it...
...Famous for his brilliant comic strip, The Spirit, Eisner died in 2005 at the age of 88...
...The Road to Perdition by Max Allan Collins...
...Characters like Archie, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, and a host of others almost equaled their maximuscled compatriots in popularity...
...Superman instantly catapulted the comic book to a new level artistically and financially...
...Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, who for years had tried in vain to peddle it as a comic strip, Superman suddenly became an American institution...
...In nine months The 9/11 Report has sold well over 100,000 copies...
...The eponymous character was an Irish urchin who ran around shoeless in a yellow nightshirt...
...The cover of Action Comics Number 1, dated June 1938, had the new hero carrying a green four-door sedan and smashing it into a rock...
...Essentially it is the other side of the coin: graphic nonfiction...
...The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller...
...For five weeks the book was on the New York Times Paperback Best Sellers list as well as similar lists across the country...
...But the ultimate conf irmation was the enthusiastic response of reviewers and readers...
...Sid Jacobson, the author of two novels (Streets of Gold and Another Time) and a biography ( Pete Reiser: The Rough-andTumble Career of the Perfect Ballplayer), was the editor in chief at Harvey Comics and the executive editor at Marvel Comics...
...A Contract With God thus became the f irst book to bear the designation “A Graphic Novel” on its cover...
...Even more remarkable was the attention it received internationally...
...He did things in comics storytelling never done before, and his page designs were equally innovative in their shape and placement of logos and type...
...Suddenly, it appears, comics have become an acceptable medium for any kind of effort...
...An early indication that we seemed to have struck the right note was the willingness of the two commission cochairmen, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, to write a highly complimentary Foreword to The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation...
...Evolution of an Art Form After the Graphic Nove l By Sid Jacobson “I T’S A GIANT LEAP from Jughead to The 9/11 Report,” began an article in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post just about a year ago...
...After this new phenomenon, what else is there comics might do...
...Contending syndicates proudly kept putting forward such strips as Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Blondie, Tarzan, Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon, Nancy, Mary Worth’s Family, Pogo, Terry and the Pirates, and, probably most endearing of all, Charles M. Schulz’ Peanuts...
...There, amid the poverty of the tenements, a gang of young denizens from various ethnic and racial backgrounds paraded and pranked...
...The strip opened another front...
...But they did not come into their own until a handsome black-haired alien, who could scale tall buildings in a single bound and was faster than a speeding bullet, entered the scene...
...Will Eisner, the most respected individual in the history of the comic book world, is given credit for conceiving it...
...All were produced in 64 colored pages of story and tantalizing ads...
...and there have been some significant creations, like Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer prize-winning Maus and Marjane Satrapi’s Pe r sepolis...
...I can answer with authority about at least one road taken, hinted at in the New York Post article mentioned above...
...When he finally called a major New York trade publisher in hopes of selling it, Eisner continued, he realized he had a problem: “A little voice inside me said . . . ‘don’t tell him it’s a comic or he’ll hang up on you.’ So I said, it’s a graphic novel...
...Now a gaggle of costumed imitations appeared (with and without super powers) to grab a piece of the market Superman had opened up...
...For long years afterward, comic magazines published properties done specifically for them and profited immensely not only from astronomical monthly sales totaling over 15 million copies, but from f ilm, television and radio rights, plus the licensing of assorted items...
...Hearst counterattacked by digging into his gold-lined pockets and buying off most of Pulitzer’s cartoon staff, including Outcault...
...TOWARD THE END of the 20th century, however, a change in distribution methods and the closing of comic book stores caused a sharp drop in magazine sales...
...The account reflected an ongoing process that has steadily and dramatically transformed the art of cartoon continuity...
...The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill...
...America’s flirtation with comics began in the 1890s, when The Yellow Kid showed up on the pages of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York W o r l d . Created by Richard Felton Outcault, an artist who signed his wo rk as R. F. Outcault, this first American comic strip portrayed a supposed New York City slum called Hogan’s Alley...
...Eisner discussed the project in 2003 on the recently discontinued TIME.comix Website...
...Previously comic books mainly reprinted strips from various newspaper syndicates or presented the third-rate adventures of some very uninspiring characters...
...Who knows what new creation someone is thinking of somewhere now...
...I sat down and tried to do a book that would physically look like a ‘legitimate’ book,” he said, “and at the same time write about a subject that would never have been addressed in comic form, which is man’s relationship with God...
...The big house wasn’t persuaded, but a small one, Baronet Press, was...
Vol. 90 • August 2007 • No. 3
