THE FIRST GRAPHIC NOVEL - GUEST POST BY BARRY PEARL...

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The Mighty BARRY PEARL has done it again - but this time he has surpassed himself.  Barry examines the origins of what is known the 'Graphic Novel', and his diligently-researched post may well surprise you.  Don't take my word for it - read it and see for yourselves.

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What was the first Graphic Novel?

The first illustrated or "picture" stories were probably done in hieroglyphics thousands of years ago and signed by Stan Lee.  The term Graphic Novel,  as it applies to the "long-form comic book", was coined in November 1964 by Richard Kyle in Capa-alpha #2, a newsletter published by the Comic Amateur Press Alliance.  As with the term "Film Noir", Graphic Novel is a term applied retroactively.  Since the 1970s the term Graphic Novel has often been used to mean comic books for older people.

It is interesting that Classics Illustrated, which adapted novels into comics, is not a factor in the Graphic Novel's development, although they could have been its logical first step.  And so could have Milt Gross' He Done Her Wrong! from 1930.  But while Gross's book does tell a story graphically, he uses no words whatsoever, so it is graphic, but really not a novel.

The Graphic Novel came into its own in the mid-1970s.  These novels would no longer be orphans at the newsstands when comic book stores began to flourish.  In the mid-1970s readers could see that Marvel's creators were looking for something more than an episodic comic.  By this time, Jack Kirby was outgrowing the comic book medium and seemed to be searching for something more complex and less collaborative.  Steve Ditko, in his 170-page story arc starting in Strange Tales #130 (Mar 1965), also seemed to be distributing a Graphic Novel into his ten monthly Doctor Strange pages.  Jim Steranko's story, "Dark Moon Rise, Hell Hound Kill!" in Nick Fury #3, was also a forerunner, showing the format, but not the length, of what could come.  When Steranko created his first true graphic novel, "Chandler", he had to find another publisher.

Comics, like TV shows, had mostly been episodes in a series, each edition or each comic having a beginning, middle and an end.  A novel does not have episodes, it has chapters that seamlessly build on previous chapters and they cannot exist separately as an episode does.

What is a Graphic Novel and what should we look for in one?  We need to go back to the mid-1800s, when Rodolphe Topffer, a Swiss innovator of the comic strip, described the essential nature of a picture story.  Topffer understood that the drawings and the text must be symbiotic:

"The drawings without their text, would have only a vague meaning;  the text, without the drawings, would have no meaning at all.  The combination of the two makes a kind of novel, all the more unique in that it is no more like a novel than it is like anything else."  In 1837, Topffer published what many consider to be the first comic book, The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck (Les Amours de M. Vieux Bois) which he wrote and drew.  In America it was published as a newspaper supplement.

A Graphic Novel should be both graphic and a novel.  The Oxford English Dictionary says that a novel is:  "a fictitious prose narrative or tale of considerable length (now usually one long enough to fill one or more volumes), in which characters and actions representative of the real life of past or present times are portrayed in a plot of more or less complexity."  Therefore, a Graphic Novel should contain illustrations that help tell a longer, involved and complete story.  However, The Oxford English Dictionary defines the Graphic Novel as a "full length story published as a book in comic strip format."  It demotes "novel" to story and illustration to "comic strip" because that is the way we use this term.  I do not know why some of their significance is lost when both words are combined.

Jim Steranko and many others claim that a graphic novel cannot contain word balloons.  As such, Steranko calls them "fat comics".  He has a point that, many times, publishers put out trade paperbacks filled with long or collected comic book stories and call them "graphic" novels, when they are just fat comics.  But for me, whether the text is in balloons or at the bottom of the page (as Hal Foster did in Prince Valiant), what is important is that they are dependent on each other to tell the story.  We should recognize the difference between a fat, well-bound comic and a Graphic Novel.  A Graphic Novel should be self-contained, and not a "collected" edition of several short stories.

In 1976, Bloodstar (Morningstar Press) gave us an early indication.  The cover said the book was "a science fiction/fantasy adventure in words and pictures."  In addition, Bloodstar "is a new, revolutionary concept -- a graphic novel, which combines all the imagination and visual power of comic strip art with the richness of the traditional novel."  The story was illustrated and adapted by Richard Corben from an original story by Robert E. Howard.

Many feel that the modern graphic novel was born in 1950 when "It Rhymes With Lust!" by Arnold Drake, Leslie Waller and Matt Baker was published by Archer St. John.  It was described as a "picture novel."  Even in 1950, Arnold Drake saw the medium as one for adults:

"As we worked with the comics form, we reasoned that for the ex-GIs who read comics while in the services and liked the graphic style of storytelling, there was room for a more developed comic book -- a deliberate bridge between comic books and book-books.  I… came up with the logo that would adorn the cover: a paintbrush and a pencil crossed over a book cover and the letters PN, for Picture Novels. What we planned was a series of Picture Novels that were, essentially, action, mystery, Western and romance movies ON PAPER.  The trouble came when it was time to market it.  There would be no space on the stands for this one odd-ball-product.

This (and the cover sketch above) is Arnold Drake's layout for 'It Rhymes
With Lust'.  (Originally called 'One Man Too Many' in its draft stage)

"I don't think there is much question that "It Rhymes with Lust" was the first graphic novel.  It wasn't a stumbling, accidental creation.  Les and I knew exactly what we set out to create.  The fact that it was essentially a ‘B Film’ on paper, rather than the more sophisticated products that came 25 years later and called themselves ‘Graphic,’ speaks to the change in the readership over those years.  The sons and daughters of the veterans who went to school on the GI Bill were a very different market than the one that Les and I dealt with back then.  I have no idea what the first Picture Novel would have been had we had that broader, deeper audience."

St. John also published a second Graphic Novel, "The Case of the Winking Buddha", but sales of both were weak and the line was discontinued.

In 1955, EC published Picto-Fiction which was inspired by Big Little Books.  It was another example of illustrated stories, not novels, trying to reach an older audience.

Let us not confuse the Graphic Novel with the format that it was originally presented in.  When Charles Dickens wrote many of his books they were published as serials, chapter by chapter, in magazines.  This approach to marketing novels was common in the nineteenth century.  If we keep this fundamental point in mind, then it is not very difficult to accept that Kirby's pre-history of the graphic novel begins with Tales of Asgard which started in Journey into Mystery #97 and ended in issue #145.  It is 245 pages.

Gil Kane would publish two stories that had great influence in developing graphic novel concepts:  "His Name is... Savage!" (1968) and "Blackmark" (1971).

The first, full, graphic novel that I read was "Chandler: Red Tide" by Jim Steranko in 1977.  It was a hardboiled detective story intended for adults. It was exciting and extremely well written, drawn and designed.  Like Lust, it had the look and feel of a film noir movie.  Its look, form and subject matter have helped jump-start the genre and obviously influenced the creators of "Sin City" and "The Road to Perdition".  Jim Steranko observed:  "When the book appeared it was not embraced by the comic-book community because it didn't have word balloons or captions."  In other words, it was not a comic book, it was truly a graphic novel.  Steranko did not create the Graphic Novel, he merely perfected it.

Byron Preiss, Chandler's publisher: "RED TIDE was an original, mass-market adult crime novel created to retail at American newsstands alongside hundreds of other paperback offerings… It supported its claim to be a graphic novel by adopting the use of continuous text and chapter breaks in traditional literary fashion, with all story pages featuring two panels, the size of which remained constant throughout the volume.  Standard comic-book devices, such as captions and dialogue balloons, were not employed.  The unique text-and-image format was used here for the first time.  Rather than using typical comics' storytelling, Steranko developed a narrative approach that mirrored the noir films of the 1930-40s and an illustration style that utilized both a hard and soft-edged treatment (without an inkline or feathering) that approximated cinematic photography, a technique that took RED TIDE another step away from comics.

Fiction Illustrated had earlier published two books that might easily be mistaken for graphic novels.  The first, "Schlomo Raven" by Tom Sutton was a light-hearted detective novel.  It had a style reminiscent of Will Elder's work in Mad.  A second book, "Starfawn" by Stephen Fabian, was a science fiction comic book for adults and was told in a traditional comic book style, complete with dialogue balloons.

The term Graphic Novel appeared on the title page and on the dust jacket.  Will Eisner's "Contract With God" (1978) is an enjoyable, absorbing tale that is a big step toward serious, adult graphic stories.  It was written soon after the tragic death of Eisner's own daughter.  It is not really a graphic novel - it wasn't long or detailed enough, it was a graphic memoir or short story.

"Maus: A Survivor's Tale" is a memoir by Art Spiegelman and is a great example of what a Graphic Novel can be.  It tells the story of Spiegelman's father who survived the Holocaust, but he uses cats and mice as the central characters.  In 1992 it won a Pulitzer Prize Special Award.  A small part was reprinted by Marvel in a black and white magazine, Comix Book in 1977.

Could Marvel and DC have produced graphic novels, or comic series?  We have a hint with Kirby's Eternals and New Gods.  I'd like to feel that the medium has evolved and has grown in the last few decades.  When I see the term "graphic novel" I hope to get more than just a long comic book story.  I would like to see stories "in which characters… are portrayed in a plot of more or less complexity" where the pictures and text are both necessary to tell the story.  There should be more experimentation as we have seen in Chandler and Maus.

Captain Marvel is correctly regarded as Marvel's first Graphic Novel.  It dealt with death in an adult manner that removed it from the typical comic book demise, albeit not without the comic book melodrama that goes hand in hand with any serious topic.  It had a beginning, a middle and a conclusion that you usually don't find in comics.  The Graphic Novel must take us to places we cannot go in a comic book.  As our expectations mature we anticipate more.  Yes, there are bad Graphic Novels and they should not be confused with "fat" comics.

So what was the first Graphic Novel?  Other than satisfying a creator's ego, it probably does not matter.  There are no "Firsts" in Comics.  Many concepts, thought to be original when used by the major publishers, may have first appeared earlier in the more obscure ones, not available on local newsstands.  Comics were published internationally and American historians tend not to consider them.  So if you read and enjoy "a fictitious prose narrative or tale of considerable length… portrayed in a plot of more or less complexity…" it's a Graphic Novel.

So the first Graphic Novel is the one you read first - whether it had dialogue balloons or not!

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Okay, Criv-ites, don't let me down.  Barry has put a lot of work into this post, even supplying the images, so be sure to leave a comment showing your appreciation.  Just think - if not for Barry, you'd be stuck with reading something by me!  (Yeah, doesn't bear thinking about, does it?)