The origin of the term graphic novel is disputed, but since Will Eisner popularised it in promoting his autobiographical A Contract with God (1978) the genre has grown explosively in both numbers appearing and the ambition of writers. It has also become as much a digital as a paper form. So how do we cope with the extraordinary works that some people insist are merely ‘comics’, fit for children, and others enjoy, yet seem embarrassed to be caught doing so?
Using the work of pioneering critic Scott McCloud, whose trilogy Understanding Comics (1994), Reinventing Comics (2000), and Making Comics (2006) opened new ways of understanding the form and its history, this course looks at four major strands. The power of revisioning is expressed in two seminal reimaginations of superheroes, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s Watchmen (both 1986-7), that declared ‘comics’ to have grown up. Graphic autobiography is associated with Art Spiegelman’s Maus, portraying his survivor-father’s stories of life in and after concentration camps, but is also found in Hiroshima-survivor Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen (both 1970s-80s); Nakazawa also brings into view the world of Japanese manga, a major influence. Graphic adaptation is explored in Martin Rowson’s strange 1990 version of Eliot’s The Waste Land, mixing the poem with Chandler, and Steve Ross’s bleakly urban version of St Mark’s Gospel, Marked (2005). And graphic journalism is evident in two prize-winning works, Joe Kubert’s Fax from Sarajevo and Joe Sacco’s Palestine (both 1996), reporting major war stories in a way television news will not.
Finally, the development of online graphic novels is considered via Ursula Vernon’s Digger (from 2007), a female wombat engineer with attitude in a very odd and often very funny, as well as moving story that won a Hugo Award in 2012 and continues to amuse a large and loyal following. Graphic novels have been digitally produced for nearly 20 years, but how does reading differ on screen and paper?
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but words and pictures together – ‘sequential art’ – can do things neither can manage alone.
