The 'graphic novel'

What is a Graphic novel?

ipl2’s definition:

Graphic novels are basically defined versions of comics; book-length so to speak. Graphic novels can be a linear narrative from start to finish or they can be lots of shorter narratives or individual comic strips. Comics are sequential visual art combined with text that is often told in a series of rectangular panels. 1 Despite its name comics don’t have to be funny. Many comics and graphic novels show much Emphasis in drama, adventure, character development, striking visuals, politics, or romance over laugh-out-loud comedy.

Wikipedia’s definition:

The term graphic novel is not strictly defined, though one broad dictionary definition is “a fictional story that is presented in a comic-strip format and presented as a book.” In the publishing trade, the term is sometimes prolonged to material that would not be classed as a novel if produced in another medium. Collections of comic books that do not procedure a continuous story, anthologies or collections of freely related pieces, and even non-fiction are stocked in libraries and bookstores as “graphic novels” (similar to the way in which dynamic stories are included in “comic” books).

History of graphic novels and how they have been developed

As the exact definition of graphic novels is questionable, the origins of the art form are open to analysis. Cave paintings may have told stories, and artists and craftspeople beginning in the ‘Middle Ages’ produced tapestries and illuminated manuscripts that helped. Visual parodies, satires, political cartoons, and straightforward funny drawings have been around for centuries also, but it took the rise of the newspaper industry in the late nineteenth century to bring comics into everyday households.

Most comic historians agree that Will Eisner was to of created the first graphic novel with his A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories, which was published in 1978. 2 Distinctively adult in its images, themes, and language, Eisner’s book spoke out to the generations that had first grown up with the superhero comics in the 1940s and 1950s.

Will Eisner, A Contract With God 

and Other Tenement Stories