Multiple Approaches to the Graphic Novel

Tales told in pictures and set in sequential frames have traditionally been associated with the superheroes and "funny papers" aimed primarily at young audiences. Some authors, however, choose to pen illustrated novels in order to address adults, precisely because the drawings, which may help convey matters difficult to express in words alone, have a different psychological impact from that of words. Graphic novels, as such books are commonly known, employ the techniques developed by comic book artists, advancing their stories through visual images and cinematic narrative, although unlike comic books their subject matter may be nonfictional and entirely serious.

One early version of the technique was used by the award-winning graphic artist Lynd Ward in the first half of the 20th century. Ward experimented with stories conveyed exclusively by images; the pictures do not illustrate a story---they are the story. His first and most famous novel without words, Gods' Man, consists of 139 images, printed from wood engravings on one side of the page only. Although it was first released the same week as the stock market crash in 1929, this novel of a struggling young artist proved very popular and went through several editions. Calling his novels "pictorial narratives," Ward produced five additional volumes from woodcuts---Madman's Drum (1930), Wild Pilgrimage (1932), Prelude to a Million Years (1933), Song without Words (1936), and Vertigo (1937). 

Ward's near-contemporary Will Eisner is best known as the cofounder in the late 1930s of a comic art shop and as the creator and illustrator of the popular vigilante comic book hero, "The Spirit." Experimenting with the sequential novel form for adult readers, Eisner's goal was to achieve not realism but believability. (He purportedly coined the term graphic novel to avoid classifying his first illustrated novel, A Contract with God, as a comic book.) His graphic novels draw on his memories of growing up in an immigrant neighborhood in lower Manhattan in the 1920s and 1930s, his observations of modern life, and his experiences in wartime Korea and Vietnam gathering material for instructional comics for the U.S. Army. Eisner also experimented with silent panels---advancing a tale without dialogue---to draw the reader into the story.

More recently, Art Spiegelman, cofounder of the publishing house Raw Books and Graphics, used graphic novels to tell his family history. Maus and Maus II relate the story of his father's imprisonment in Auschwitz (called Mauschwitz in the novel) and his later struggle to come to terms with the horror of the Holocaust. The novels depict Jews as mice, Poles as pigs, and Germans as cats, thus giving the stories an aura of myth or allegory and allowing the reader some distance from the real-life brutality of the concentration camps. The books include stories within the main story and are interspersed with maps of Poland, layouts of the camp, diagrams of the crematoria, and family pictures. The drawings are never left to stand alone but are always accompanied by narrative, dialogue, and commentary. Spiegelman was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for Maus, which naturally improved the general public's recognition of the graphic novel as a valid literary form.

In a similar vein, Marjane Satrapi examines the fall of the shah of Iran, the Islamic Revolution, and the Iran-Iraq War in her autobiography Persepolis. Seen through the eyes of a child, her story of a society in flux is revealed through the child's interactions with her extended family and her classmates. The well-received and award winning book was eventually made into a film of the same name, which won the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize and the British Film Institute’s Sutherland Trophy in 2007. The film also received Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations in 2008.

Another award winner was Ben Katchor, who was given a MacArthur fellowship in 2000 for his creative use of the graphic storytelling medium. The artist and author of weekly strips such as Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer and The Jew of New York, Katchor creates a timeless New York City landscape within which he places characters who voice the concerns of the contemporary age. 

Other graphic writers following a similar route to Katchor have focused on the minutia of everyday life and have had their work translated into film. Daniel Clowes's Ghost World, a coming-of-age tale about two teenaged girls during their postgraduation summer, was released in 2000 as an independent film and won critical praise. More recently, Harvey Pekar's American Splendor, which uncovers the humor and humanity in life's most mundane moments, was shown on the HBO (Home Box Office) cable channel after winning the Grand Jury award at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.

Graphic novels are currently a multimillion-dollar market, which is expanding rapidly as it gains acceptance in mainstream publishing houses. Will Eisner once said in an interview that his goal was to have his books carried by the major bookstores, alongside other serious novels. With major bookstore chains now devoting whole sections of their floor space to the graphic novel, one can safely say that Eisner's dream has come true.