EM7 REPORTING - November

Required Readings - Graphic Novel and Illustrated Novel

Graphic Novel

Background
● The term “graphic novel” was first coined in 1964, by fan historian Richard Kyle. Will
Eisner’s famous A Contract with God, published in 1978, was one of the earliest works to
use the term in its branding, and helped to popularize it among comic book fans. In short
order, it was followed by Marvel’s Graphic Novel line, which were published in
oversized formats similar to the “albums” in which French and other European comics
were frequently collected.
● In the comic industry, graphic novels are often distinguished from what are known as
“trade paperbacks” or “trades” by the fact that the graphic novel is published first as a
book, rather than serialized in individual issues, whereas trades are usually collections of
comics that were previously published as single issues.
● The first graphic novels appeared in the United States between the late 1970s and mid
1980s, but the format did not reach mainstream audiences until the rise of Japanese
manga (an umbrella term for several types of graphic novel in Japan).
● Some of the first books to actually use the term in their own marketing, however, hit
stands around 1976.
● The rise in graphic novels also coincided with the development of the “direct market”
for American comic books, which led to our friendly local comic shops of today. Prior to
the 1970s, comic books were primarily stocked at newsstands, grocery or drug stores, and
toy shops. While there were a few specialty comic book shops, they were far from
ubiquitous.
 ● As the direct market model changed how comic books were sold, the room for “prestige”
treatment books such as graphic novels and hardcovers grew, thereby helping to buoy the
success of the format.

What are Graphic Novels?

● "Graphic Novel" is a format, not a genre.
● Graphic novels can be fiction, non-fiction, history, fantasy, or anything in-between.
● Graphic novels are similar to comic books because they use sequential art to tell a story.
Unlike comic books, graphic novels are generally stand-alone stories with more complex
plots. Collections of short stories that have been previously published as individual comic
books are also considered graphic novels.
● Merriam-Webster defines it as “a fictional story that is presented in comic-strip format
and published as a book.”
Major Types of Graphic Novels
There are as many genres and sub-genres as in traditional fiction and non-fiction. The following
are only a few of the most predominant categories.

● Manga: The Japanese word for "comic" but in the US is used to describe Japanese style
comics. Manga is read from top to bottom and right to left as this is the traditional
Japanese reading pattern. Though, technically Manga refers to Japanese comics, many
think Manga refers to a style rather than the country of origin.
Titles: Death Note, FullMetal Alchemist
● Superhero Story: Superhero graphic novels have taken the most popular form of comics
and turned what were once brief episodic adventures into epic sagas. Superhero comics
are dominated by a few mainstream publishers Marvel, DC, and Darkhorse.
Titles: Batman: Dark Knight Returns, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Astrocity.
● Personal Narratives ("Perzines"): are autobiographical stories written from the author's
personal experiences, opinions, and observations.
Titles: Fun Home, Blankets, Lucky, The Quitter.
● Non-fiction: are similar to perzine's in that they are written from the author's personal
experience, but the author is generally using their own experience to touch upon a greater
social issue.
Titles: Pedro and Me, Maus, Persepolis.

Structural Features
● Panels
- A box containing pictures, showing what us happening in the story
- Represents a moment in time,: a single action
- Arranged left to right, top to bottom
● Panel positions
- Full page panels are used for effect
- Overlapping panels depicts almost simultaneous events in the storyline
- Floating panels are smaller panels placed over larger panels; usually
conveys events happening simultaneously over the same time period in
two different locations
● Gutter
- The space between panels
● Splash page
- Opening page of a graphic novel; contains title, subtitles and credits for
writers and artists
● Word Balloon
- Oval in shape contains dialogue of characters, speech balloon often has
squiggly shape attached pointing to the speaker
● Thought Balloon
- Silent thought of characters contained in these fluffy clouds with scalloped
edges, bubbles lead to thinker
● Letters and Documents
- Used to move the story along as the character reads information, so do we
 ● Caption Box
- Rectangular Box at top or bottom of panel - is a narrative aid that helps
reader to understand setting shifts and transition between panels
● Bug’s Eye View
- Depicts panel from the ground up (looming)
● Top of Hat View
- Shows scene from above (looking down)
● Lighting
- Plays a crucial role in creating mood and feeling within the panel
- Darkness = mysterious, foreboding
- Brightness = happy, positive
● Sound
- Shown through words (onomatopoeia) and how they are drawn (vibrating
word shows alarm clock)
● Text Features
- Bold = boldness or strength
- Italics = projects intensity of conversation
- Smaller print size = dialects and different languages

Stylistic Features

● Lighting and Color

○ Lighting and colour may be used to show different moods. For example, bright
colours and light are often used to show a sense of fun and happiness, while dull
colours and dim lighting may be used to show gloom and sadness or to create
tension or suspense.
○ Colours may also have specific associations. For example, red might
communicate ideas of violence, danger or romance depending on how it’s used.
● Onomatopoeia
○ The formation of a word to imitate the natural sound of something associated with
it. These are famously used in comics or graphic novels as a pictorial
representation of a sound.
● Setting
○ The time and location depicted in the background of a panel can give information
or help convey mood or atmosphere.
○ Consider the ideas or associations we have with certain places and how the setting
helps to drive the narrative.
● Emanata
○ This term refers to the teardrops, sweat drops, question marks, or motion lines that
portray a characters’ emotions or movement.
 ● Objects
○ Objects can be important and meaningful. They can reveal information about a
character, setting or theme.
○ Think about the connotations of different objects. For example, a ring on a certain
finger symbolises being married.
● Body Language
○ Facial Expressions
■ A form of non-verbal communication using the movement of facial
features such as eyes, cheeks & mouth.
○ Gesture
■ The movement and positioning of the hands and arms to communicate or
undertake action.
○ Posture
■ The position in which someone holds their body. This nonverbal
communication tells us about the person’s mood.
○ Gaze
■ Where the person is looking and who or what the person is looking at.
This can draw our focus towards something.

TedTalk on Graphic Novel

https://youtu.be/qAyEbgSPi9w

Illustrated Novel
History
The history of illustration ranges from ancient Egyptian papyrus to twenty-first-century
computer-generated images. Illustrations accompany religious texts, works of nonfiction, poetry,
and narrative prose fiction, but the illustrated novel developed in the eighteenth century,
primarily in France and England, and reached its height in the nineteenth century.
● The first European illustrated books used woodcuts, and were printed by Albrecht Pfister
between 1460 and 1465 in Bamberg, Germany.
● By the 1600s, copper engraving rivaled woodcut.
● Thomas Bewick (1753—1828) revolutionized the process of book illustration with
end-grain wood engraving.
● Steel-plate engraving, invented in 1792 by the American Jacob Perkins (1766—1849),
was also employed for book illustration.
● During the Revolutionary Era (1776—1815) in Europe and America, illustrations were a
vital form for influencing public sentiment through comic images, satirical caricature, or
tragic feeling. From this productive history emerged three principal characteristics of
literary illustration: passionate emotion, exceptional composition, and distinctive
narrative.

Definition
The term illustrated novel refers to an extended narrative with multiple images that, together
with the text, produce meaning. It is a hybrid of sequential art and prose, but without panels, or a
picture book that grew up to become a novel. These come in all forms, some of which even
incorporate comic-strip sequences, but one illustrated novel mainstay is that the images and text
are interdependent.

The illustrated novel is one of the simplest methods of visual communication. The first
languages were composed of pictorial symbols. Illustrations served a practical as well as an
aesthetic purpose: they advertised the story, illuminated themes, reminded readers of specific
characters, and supplied readers with information not explicit in the text.

Illustrated novels are illustrations that have a powerful potential to communicate meaning. The
illustrations are able to “encode” the novels with new meanings, and that illustrations allow
readers to explore texts in new ways.

As A Literary Genre
Illustrated novels are a literary genre that focuses on the art of illustration. In this type of novel,
illustrations take center stage and often serve as the main focus of the narrative. An illustrated
novel contains illustrations, rather than text. It may be a children's book or a novel for adults.
The illustrations are usually made by hand and can include drawings, paintings and photographs.
Characteristics
● Stories are through text and illustrated images
● Generally, 50% of the narrative is presented without words. The reader must interpret the
images in order to comprehend the complete story.
● Textual portions are presented in traditional form.
● Some illustrated novels may contain no text at all.
● Illustrated novels span all genres

Examples
● Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
○ Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865
English novel by Lewis Carroll. After a tumble down the rabbit hole, Alice finds
herself far away from home in the absurd world of Wonderland. As mind-bending
as it is delightful, Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel is pure magic for young and old
alike.
● Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
○ Oliver Twist or the Parish Boy's Progress, Charles Dickens's second novel, was
published as a serial from 1837 to 1839, and as a three-volume book in 1838.
Born in a workhouse, the orphan Oliver Twist is bound into apprenticeship with
an undertaker. Oliver Twist is a young orphan. His life in the workhouse is lonely
and sad. Oliver becomes an apprentice for an undertaker but runs away after he
gets into a fight with another apprentice. When Oliver arrives in London, he
meets Jack, also known as the Artful Dodger, who offers him a place to stay.
● Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
○ Treasure Island is an adventure novel originally published in 1882 by Scottish
author Robert Louis Stevenson, telling a story of "buccaneers and buried gold". It
is considered a coming-of-age story and is noted for its atmosphere, characters,
and action. The novel tells the story of an impulsive and adventurous young boy
named Jim Hawkins who comes across a treasure map. He goes on a journey to
try and recover the treasure, which once belonged to the famous Captain Flint. On
his journey, he meets Long John Silver, a one-legged cook who ends up leading a
pirate mutiny.

Examples of Illustrated Novel

● The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a 2007 children's novel by American author and
illustrator Brian Selznick. The novel was critically acclaimed and was awarded the 2008
Randolph Caldecott Medal. In 2011, the book was adapted into a film called Hugo. The
Invention of Hugo Cabret is about a young boy living in Paris in 1931 and the adventures
he has. It is also a love letter to the early days of silent filmmaking.

Genre of Hugo Cabret

Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret book is considered a work of historical fiction.
Historical fiction is a genre that takes some real life facets of history and intersperses
them with an invented narrative. Usually, works of historical fiction will deal with
notable moments in history or real historical figures, and The Invention of Hugo Cabret is
no different. One of its primary characters is Georges Méliès, a French illusionist and
early filmmaker. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is not a straightforward novel in the
traditional sense. It is filled with Selznick's own illustrations, which play a unique role in
the story. Many parts of the narrative are told exclusively through pictures, while others
are text-only or a combination of the two. The novel has been described as a combination
of a flipbook, or picture book, and a text-based narrative. Selznick's illustrations help
bring the world of 1930s Paris to life in vivid detail.

● The Arrival

The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images. A man leaves his
wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country
on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of
foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages.
With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a
place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the
way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of
struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope.
Critical Issues

Illustrated novels are fertile ground for cultural studies and literary criticism. During the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, questions concerning aesthetics, the relationship
between image and text, and how meaning is conveyed were prompted by rapid cultural
changes. What could be seen by the human eye, what remained invisible, and how
accurate one's interpretations could be were questions of deep interest and concern to
Victorians (Flint).

The eye could be misled, words could be misunderstood, but if descriptions were based
on visual experience, on observation, or “fact,” then words could attach meaning to those
images. Together, words with images could create narrative “truth.”

Paul Goldman and David Skilton both emphasize the importance of original illustrations.
Skilton explains that “literary illustration in fact occupied a central place in Victorian
visual and verbal culture” and asserts that illustrated novels should be recognized as the
“bimodal works they are” (par. 1, 24). Yet questions remain. Are illustrations necessary to
the work? If so, then how? If not, why not?

Illustrations can liberate, suggest, or open up speculation to the reader through their
originality or their relationship to other images, but they can also limit, impose, or fix
certain interpretations. Although integral to the serialized and three-volume novel
throughout the nineteenth century in Europe and America, illustrations were also viewed
as secondary, operating merely in service to the text or as distractions from the text

Indeed, the relationship between image and text, like that between authors and
illustrators, can become uncomfortable over time. For modern readers, original
illustrations may present certain difficulties

Graphic Novel vs Illustrated Novel

Similarities of Graphic Novel and Illustrated Novel:

What graphic novels and illustrated novels obviously have in common is that they both
tell a story not only through the written word, but through drawn pictures as well. They
both use illustrations to further emphasize the scene of the story.

Differences between Graphic Novel and Illustrated Novel:

In illustrated novels, the drawings illustrate or extend the text. In graphic novels, the
illustrations are the story. Illustrated novels use pictures of illustrations to further
emphasize the scene of the story. It doesn’t necessarily need text on the pictures or
drawing as long as it coincides with the story. On the other hand, graphic novels use
pictures or drawing to convey the story itself. The