Art of the Graphic Novel, The

ALAN Review, Winter 2005 by Shanower, Eric

Adapted from an address delivered at the 2004 ALAN Workshop. Mr. Shallower accompanied his talk with a beautiful slide show and refers to the slides in this address.

"Graphic novel" is an awkward term. The "graphic" part is okay, graphic novels always have graphics. It's the "novel" part that's a problem, because graphic novels aren't always novels told with drawings. They can be works of non-fiction or collections of short stories or, really, anything you can think of that consists of drawings that convey narrative between two substantial covers.

The term "graphic novel" isn't much better or more accurate a description than the term "comic book." But "comic book" has pejorative connotations, and many people seem either embarrassed or dismissive when confronted by it. Alternatives to the term graphic novel have been suggested-"drawn book," "sequential art," "graphic album." All these terms are just labels to describe different physical manifestations of one artform. But the term graphic novel is one that has caught on and, for better or for worse, it seems we're stuck with it.

I'm here to speak to you about the art of the graphic novel. When you hear the phrase, the art of the graphic novel, you likely think of the drawings, rather than the story. But I bet most of you will agree that writing is an art just as drawing is. I'm going to talk about both.

Let's forget about graphic novels for a moment and think about what I call cartooning. Or you can call it "comic art" or "sequential art." Cartooning is the art of telling a story in pictures, often using written words as in integral part of the drawing. The history of cartooning starts a bit nebulously. Some comic art historians would include the paintings in ancient Egyptian tombs-which combined sequential drawings and hieroglyphic lettering-as comic art. Surely the Bayeux Tapestry-which shows the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066-is a form of comic art. There are plenty of similar examples. But, in general, historians agree that the modern form of comic art began in 1895 in the pages of the newspaper. There are precursors, but R. F. Outcault's The Yellow Kid in the New York World is generally accepted as the first comic strip. Newspaper comic strips became quite popular. Soon publishers began experimenting with formats, collecting newspaper strips, as well as original material, in stand-alone volumes. After much experimentation with formats, the modern comic book appeared in the mid-1930s and remained little changed for decades. In 1978 the first graphic novel that was specifically called a graphic novel-there were many precursors-appeared, A Contract with God by Will Eisner. In the early 1980s U.S. comic book publishers began to experiment with higher quality production values in paper stock, in reproduction, and in format. Graphic novels began to appear on every side-both original material and collections of material that had first appeared in serialized comic books. Today the tide of graphic novels shows no signs of retreating.

Now, don't think that the art of cartooning is solely an American phenomenon. The modern comic strip and comic book are certainly forms native to America, but comics are published around the world. In France they're known as bande dessinée, in Spain as historietta or tebeos, in Italy as fumetti, and in Japan as manga.

About fifteen or so years ago, manga began invading the USA and has become so popular that you've probably heard of it. But there's still confusion about what manga is, so I'd like to offer a short explanation. The word "manga" is simply the Japanese word for comics. Any comic art produced in Japan is manga. Manga's popularity in the USAprimarily among girls, a readership that American comics have for decades failed to reach-has prompted many U.S. publishers to produce comics drawn with the artistic conventions of manga. This U.S. material is called American Manga or Amerimanga.

But back to the art of graphic novels. For approximately the past twenty-five years, the level of artistry in US comics and graphic novels has risen. Where before the appearance of works worth preserving was arguably sporadic, today the number of works which are worth experiencing for their high level of artistry is growing rapidly and seems in no danger of stopping.

So if we have works worth preserving we must find a way to preserve them, and that's one reason the form called the graphic novel developed. They're not colorful but disposable supplements to the newspaper, not flimsy, ephemeral pamphlets, but substantial books meant to be placed on a bookshelf and preserved-preserved not as collectibles, preserved not as bridges to reading so-called "real" books, but preserved for their own worth-as tangible expressions of creators who have dug down into their hearts and souls and carefully arranged what they found there for the rest of the world to experience.

Now it's time to pull back the curtain on the art of the graphic novel and see how it's done.

There are probably as many methods of cartooning as there are cartoonists, but the only method I'm intimately familiar with is my own, so I'm mostly going to be using my current project, Age of Bronze, as an example. But in general my methods are pretty standard. So I think I'll be giving you a reasonable glimpse into the way graphic novels are created. Age of Bronze is my retelling of the story of the Trojan War in seven volumes. Two volumes have been published so far, A Thousand Ships and Sacrifice. I'm currently working on the third volume, Betrayal.