Killing Joke, the band, not the Batman Graphic Novel

[Eight Bit Alien]

Also just my 2 cents "graphic novel" made perfect sense when Will was writing the Contract with God series and all those similar books were hitting the market, but kinda lost meaning when it became branding jargon for stuff like Watchmen and early trade paperbacks. Like, the Dark Phoenix Saga isn't a graphic novel... or if it is, then what isn't?

A standalone book, purposefully designed to be one big slab of a story... I think "graphic novel" works great for that. But there is this odd impulse to make some comics seem more fancy and artful than others... "no no this isn't some broad, childish comic book... it's my new artistic graphic novel..." is so silly and insecure.

My whole life though, people have used the terms interchangeably and at this point it's just a normal thing people say

[spacehamster]

A standalone book, purposefully designed to be one big slab of a story... I think "graphic novel" works great for that. But there is this odd impulse to make some comics seem more fancy and artful than others... "no no this isn't some broad, childish comic book... it's my new artistic graphic novel..." is so silly and insecure.

What irks me is that I can use comic books for the English program I teach, but all of the curriculum material published by the relevant governing body calls it "graphic novels". Needless to say, these are the same fucktards who talk about "speech bubbles" and "frames".

My problem with the term is that it's an expression of an inferiority complex. Comic books are a legitimate art form on their own, and we still haven't outgrown the compulsion to either somehow relate them to movies or prose literature to derive some sense of legitimacy from more "accepted" art forms. FUCK that. You want to tell me Watchmen has less artistic merit than a goddamn Twilight novel?

[Geeheeb]

morbius doesn't sparkle

[The Bill]

Is Twilight a comic book because it’s unintentionally funny?

[Brutus Frank]

Is Twilight a comic book because it’s unintentionally funny?

H O T N O W