July 20, 2004
The New York Times on Graphic Novels
Charles McGrath, former editor of the Times' Book Review, has written an informative overview of the art comics movement.
Comics are also enjoying a renaissance and a newfound respectability right now. In fact, the fastest-growing section of your local bookstore these days is apt to be the one devoted to comics and so-called graphic novels. It is the overcrowded space way in the back—next to sci-fi probably, or between New Age and hobbies—and unless your store is staffed by someone unusually devoted, this section is likely to be a mess.… What you're looking for is shelved upside down and sideways sometimes—comic books of another sort, substantial single volumes (as opposed to the slender series installments), often in hard cover, with titles that sound just like the titles of "real" books: Palestine, Persepolis, Blankets (this one tips in at 582 pages, which must make it the longest single-volume comic book ever), David Chelsea in Love, Summer Blonde, The Beauty Supply District, The Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Some of these books have titles that have become familiar from recent movies: Ghost World, American Splendor, Road to Perdition. Others, like Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (unpaged, but a good inch and a quarter thick) and Daniel Clowes's David Boring, have achieved cult status on many campuses.
These are the graphic novels—the equivalent of "literary novels" in the mainstream publishing world—and they are beginning to be taken seriously by the critical establishment. Jimmy Corrigan even won the 2001 Guardian Prize for best first book, a prize that in other years has gone to authors like Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer and Philip Gourevitch.
…
[T]here is something like a critical mass of artists, young and old, uncovering new possibilities in this once-marginal form, and a new generation of readers, perhaps, who have grown up staring at cartoon images on their computer screens and in their video games, not to mention the savvy librarians and teachers who now cater to their interests and short attention spans. The publicity that has spilled over from movies like Ghost World, originally a graphic novel by Dan Clowes, has certainly not hurt. And there is much better distribution of high-end comics now, thanks in part to two enterprising publishers, Drawn and Quarterly in Montreal and Fantagraphics Books in Seattle, which have managed to get their wares into traditional bookstores, not just the comics specialty shops. Some of the better-known graphic novels are published not by comics companies at all but by mainstream publishing houses—by Pantheon, in particular—and have put up mainstream sales numbers. Persepolis, for example, Marjane Satrapi's charming, poignant story, drawn in small black-and-white panels that evoke Persian miniatures, about a young girl growing up in Iran and her family's suffering following the 1979 Islamic revolution, has sold 450,000 copies worldwide so far; Jimmy Corrigan sold 100,000 in hardback, and the newly released paperback is also moving briskly.
Although I must object to the notion that the graphic novel is "a form perfectly suited to our dumbed-down culture," (a throwaway line from early in the piece) the article provides an excellent introduction to the best work being done in North American comics today. The author highlights Spiegelman, (a big influence of mine) Ware, Seth, Sacco, Brown, and a few of our other luminaries. As a friend remarked to me: "if someone bought just the books mentioned in this article, they'd have a damned fine comics library."
Posted by Don at July 20, 2004 04:50 PM