Dissecting Graphic Fiction: A Study of the Hybrid Form of the 21st Century

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-256
Author(s):  
Dr M. S. Xavier Pradheep Singh
Keyword(s):  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Hybrid Form ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Cave Paintings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Unique Approach ◽  
Meaningful Interaction

“Comic art does possess the potential for the most serious and sophisticated literary and artistic expression, and we can only hope that future artists will bring the art form to full fruition” (176), prophesied Lawrence Abbott in 1986. It became true when Graphic Fiction emerged as a hybrid genre and entered into the academia. It is a meaningful interaction of words, image panels, and typography. They have a long history dating back to cave paintings and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Though there are “more genetic similarities between the comic book and the graphic novel” (Sardesai 28), Graphic Novel has a unique approach to plot, narration, and theme. This new genre combines visual and verbal rhetoric and thus offers a hybrid form of reading. The use of blank spaces between image panels provides “imaginative interactivity” (Tabachnick 25), as the reader tends to fill in these blanks, imagining a good deal of action. Text boxes, speech bubbles, and thought bubbles streamline the narration and create a sense of interactivity in a reader. This paper records the history of Graphic Novel and makes an anatomy of it. It also enlists recent Graphic novels and major techniques employed in them.

Serials to Graphic Novels

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine J. Golden
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Victorian Novels ◽  
Book Illustration ◽  
History Of ◽  
Illustrated Book

The Victorian illustrated book is a genre that came into being, flourished, and evolved during the long nineteenth century and finds new expression in present-day graphic novel adaptations of nineteenth-century novels. This history of the Victorian illustrated book focuses on fluidity in styles of illustration across the arc of a genre diverse enough to include serial instalments, British and American periodicals, adult and children’s literature, and—most recently—graphic novels. The caricature school of illustration, popular in the 1830s and 1840s, was not a transient first period in the history of the illustrated book. In the 1870s, Academy-trained artists for the Household Edition of Dickens’s work refined characters created by George Cruikshank and Hablot Knight Browne for an audience that appreciated realism in illustration, but their illustrations carry the imprint of caricature. At the fin de siècle—which some critics consider a third period of the Victorian illustrated book and others call the genre’s decline—book illustration thrived in certain serial formats, artists’ books, children’s literature, and the U.S. market where we again witness a reengagement with the caricature tradition as well as a continuation of the realistic school. The Victorian illustrated book finds new expression in our time; the graphic novel adaptation of Victorian novels, referred to as the graphic classics, is a prescient modern form of material culture that is the heir of the Victorian illustrated book.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine J. Golden
Keyword(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Illustrated Books ◽  
Alice In Wonderland ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
Illustrated Book

The conclusion looks forward from the Victorian illustrated book to the “graphic classics,” a form of modern popular culture that is arguably the heir of the Victorian illustrated book. Canonical texts adapted into graphic novel format are inheritors of the aesthetic conventions of caricature and realism, reshaped in a hyper-modern form to appeal to twenty-first-century readers. The chapter explores parallels between the serial and the comic book. It surveys graphic novel adaptations of nineteenth-century novels by Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, and Anthony Trollope as well as Neo-Victorian graphic novels (e.g. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and original Victorian-themed graphic novels (e.g. Batman Noël). The conclusion focuses on two important Victorian illustrated books—Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1838) and Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865)—to demonstrate how graphic novel adaptation is reviving a genre that a century before recognized pictures play a central role in plot and character development. This chapter foregrounds author-illustrator Will Eisner, the father of the graphic novel and author-illustrator of Fagin the Jew (2003), for his direct challenge to a religious and ethnic stereotype that Dickens and Cruikshank develop in Oliver Twist and Du Maurier carries into Trilby.

The Bible and Graphic Novels and Comic Books

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew T. Coates
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Sequential Art ◽  
The Bible ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Words And Images ◽  
The Relationship

“The Bible and Graphic Novels and Comic Books” argues that Protestants used images for a surprising range of religious purposes in their twentieth-century comic book Bibles. The chapter provides a brief theoretical overview of the medium of sequential art and the relationship between words and images in Protestant comic book Bibles. It also examines the history of Protestant comic book Bible production from the 1930s to the 2010s. The chapter argues that changing artistic styles in comic books reveal changing religious and cultural sensibilities in twentieth-century American Protestantism. The chapter offers close examinations of significant examples from the history of comic book Bibles, discussing the religious work these images performed in Protestant communities.

Computing Literary Surplus Value: Alan Moore and the Density of the Comic Book as Graphic Novel

2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-223
Author(s):  
Alexander Dunst ◽  
Rita Hartel
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Text And Image ◽  
Specific Element ◽  
Surplus Value ◽  
Graphic Narratives ◽  
Textual Content ◽  
Alan Moore

Abstract The term graphic novel has increasingly functioned as a catalyst for understanding comic books as an emergent literary genre. This article focuses on one specific element within this historical process: the claim, made by artists such as Alan Moore, that graphic novels are characterized by greater formal complexity, or density, than serial comics. These claims are evaluated by combining computational text and image recognition of a corpus of 131 graphic narratives with sociological metadata on production and circulation. The results show that Moore’s own book-length comics, in particular Watchmen and V for Vendetta, rank among the densest graphic narratives in the sample in both their visual and textual content. Graphic memoirs, in contrast, only show an increase in textual complexity. With Pierre Bourdieu, the article understands complexity as a social and aesthetic strategy that aims at increasing the cultural capital of comics creators. At the same time, the article contextualizes computational results against the background of a changing marketplace for comics, in particular the decline of serial comics, the shift towards digital printing, and increased access to book distribution. This analysis shows that graphic narratives pursue both literary and popular aesthetic strategies, challenging Bourdieu’s account of a clear opposition between profit and prestige in cultural production.

The Book of Jonah in Graphic Novel Adaptations of the Bible

2020 ◽  
pp. 380-398
Author(s):  
Scott S. Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Key Aspects

This chapter defines graphic Bibles in relation to comics and graphic novels, identifying key aspects that impact the reader’s experience of the biblical material. Graphic Bibles are adaptations of biblical material that reflect a form of visual narratology. Through a comparative analysis of how four graphic Bibles (Testament, The Manga Bible, The Action Bible, and The Lion Comic Book Hero Bible) treat the story of Jonah, the chapter illustrates certain trends among graphic adaptations of the Bible. In every instance, whether or to what extent something is gained or lost in these productions vis-à-vis the biblical source material depends largely on one’s underlying perceptions of what sort of text the Bible is in the first place.

scholarly journals “Sometimes Your Memories Are Not Your Own”: The Graphic Turn and the Future of Holocaust Representation

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 136
Author(s):  
Victoria Aarons
Keyword(s):  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
Text And Image ◽  
Hybrid Form ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Eva Hoffman ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

“The legacy of the Shoah” writes Eva Hoffman, a child of Holocaust survivors, “is being passed on to … the post-generation … The inheritance … is being placed in our hands, perhaps in our trust.” We are entering an era that will witness the end of direct survivor testimony. As we move farther and farther from the events of the Shoah, subsequent generations, who see their own lives shaped by the defining rupture of the past, continue to respond to the call of memory. The current era has seen a burgeoning of Holocaust literary representation in the evolving genre of graphic novels, narratives that reanimate and materialize the past through the juxtapositions and intersections of text and image. Calling upon the Deuteronomic imperative to “teach your children,” second and third-generation Holocaust writers, through the hybrid form of the graphic novel, attempt to give shape to the traumatic imprint of the Shoah and its haunting aftermath for generations extending beyond that history.

STUDENTS’ ACCEPTANCE TO USING GRAPHIC NOVELS IN LEARNING LITERATURE (L2): A MALAYSIAN CASE STUDY

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Abu Yazid Abu Bakar ◽  
Dayang Nurfaezah Abang Ahmad ◽  
Melor Md Yunus
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Method ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Mixed Method Study ◽  
Motivation To Learn ◽  
Esl Teachers ◽  
English As Second Language ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

Research has shown that using graphic novels in the classroom is one of useful approaches to promote the understanding of learners especially for lengthy and difficult literature texts. This study reports the extent of graphic novel in facilitating students’ understanding of literature and the students’ perceptions towards using graphic novel in learning literature (L2) as compared to other genre of texts. This is a mixed method study which employs quantitative and qualitative methods to obtain data. The findings indicate that most students found that graphic novel helped them to enrich their vocabularies and understand the text better. The findings also reveal that students were attracted to the illustrations in the literature text in which this helps to boost their motivation to learn literature in the classroom. The findings provide useful insights for English as Second Language (ESL) teachers in incorporating and expanding the literature learning through graphic novels in the future. The findings also imply the need of ESL teachers to use graphic novels effectively in facilitating their teaching and learning of literature in L2 classrooms particularly to suit the 21<sup>st</sup> century teaching and learning.

Unions and the Popular Front: The West Coast Waterfront in the 1930s

1986 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 59-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Human Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Made In

Recent discussions of the history of American communism have generated a good deal of controversy. A youthful generation of “new social historians” has combined with veterans of the Communist party to produce a portrait of the Communist experience in the United States which posits a tension between the Byzantine pursuit of the “correct line” at the top and the impulses and needs of members at the base trying to cope with a complex reality. In the words of one of its most skillful practitioners, “the new Communist history begins with the assumption that … everyone brought to the movement expectations, traditions, patterns of behavior and thought that had little to do with the decisions made in the Kremlin or on the 9th floor of the Communist Party headquarters in New York.” The “new” historians have focused mainly on the lives of individuals, the relationship between communism and ethnic and racial subcultures, and the effort to build the party's influence within particular unions and working-class constituencies. Overall, the portrait has been critical but sympathetic and has served to highlight the party's “human face” and the integrity of its members.

From Cerisy to Oubapo

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Thierry Groensteen
Keyword(s):  
Media Environment ◽  
Cross Media ◽  
Bande Dessinee ◽  
Art Form ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Exploration

Thierry Groensteen’s memoir recalls the intellectual ferment of colloquia held at Cerisy-la-Salle in Normandy, subsequently the venue for two conferences organised by Groensteen himself. The first, the ground-breaking Bande dessinée, récit et modernité [Comics, Narrative and Modernity] in 1987, was a key moment in the history of the theorisation of comics as art form. Groensteen’s own presentation explored the threshold of narrativity in comics, and other noteworthy contributions included those of the philosopher Henri Van Lier and Marc Avelot, whose reading of Martin Vaughn-James’s La Cage rescued this masterpiece from obscurity. This conference also laid the foundations for the Oubapo movement, the production of comics under constraint, whose later development Groensteen chronicles. The second, ‘La Transécriture’, in 1993, was an early exploration of comics as part of a cross-media environment.

scholarly journals A Survey of Graphic Novel Collection and Use in American Public Libraries

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Francis Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
New Media ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Similar Data ◽  
Marketing Tool

Abstract Objective – The objective of this study was to survey American public libraries about their collection and use of graphic novels and compare their use to similar data collected about video games. Methods – Public libraries were identified and contacted electronically for participation through an open US government database of public library systems. The libraries contacted were asked to participate voluntarily. Results – The results indicated that both graphic novels and video games have become a common part of library collections, and both media can have high levels of impact on circulation. Results indicated that while almost all libraries surveyed had some graphic novels in their collections, those serving larger populations were much more likely to use graphic novels in patron outreach. Similarly, video game collection was also more commonly found in libraries serving larger populations. Results also showed that young readers were the primary users of graphic novels. Conclusion – Responses provided a clear indicator that graphic novels are a near-ubiquitous part of public libraries today. The results on readership bolster the concept of graphic novels as a gateway to adult literacy. The results also highlight differences between larger and smaller libraries in terms of resource allocations towards new media. The patron demographics associated with comics show that library cooperation could be a potential marketing tool for comic book companies.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document