A new mainstream
A new mainstream |
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Page 10 of 23  When the Wind Blows (Penguin, 1982). Art/script: Raymond Briggs. Mainstream book publishers entered the graphic novel field in the 1980s, with very limited success This third point needs further elucidation. In a sense, the idea of the 'graphic novel' was hype - the invention of publishers' public relations departments. It meant that publishers could sell adult comics to a wider public by giving them another name: specifically, by associating them with novels, and disassociating them from comics. They hoped that, even though the actual stories were about superheroes, people would buy them on the grounds that they represented a 'new wave' in literature. With a bit of careful media orchestration, it was even speculated that a whole new market could be opened up away from the fan-shops. So it was that the industry began to solicit the mainstream press for reviews, and to advertise outside the fan market. (The hot comics creators were 'sold' like hot novelists.) As one DC Comics advert put it, placed in general interest magazines: 'You outgrew comics - now they've caught up with you!' In other words, the comics industry started operating like any other sector of the book publishing world. In fact, there was more to the 'graphic novel' than hype. To begin with, they were not as new as the public relations people made out, and had a respectable history stretching back to the 1940s. In essence, they were what they said they were: novels in graphic form. More specifically, they could be defined as: 'lengthy comics in book form with a thematic unity'. As such, it was possible to locate examples from just about every phase in American comics development (the venerable Will Eisner, for example, had produced a well-known graphic novel A Contract With God in 1978). Meanwhile in Europe, album-form comics had been extremely popular for roughly the same span of time: few homes were without Tintin albums on the bookshelves, while adult albums had been extremely popular since the mid-1970s.  Arkham Asylum (DC Comics, 1989). Art: Dave McKean. Script: Grant Morrison. Another grim take on the Batman myth, this time putting The Joker centre-stage (Arkham Asylum is where Batman's foes spend time between crimes). The comic appeared as a one-shot, hardback graphic novel, fully painted in a spectacular photo-realist style, and published on top quality paper. |