That said, I’m with you. A two page comic is not a graphic novel, a comic is not a graphic novel, and anyone who tries to tell me it is will get an earful.

Personally, I tend to use the term “comic books” for trades, and “floppies” for singles.

A

Did you get married?

I don’t think so, “Mr. Jay Roe”

The first point I made was that I think that graphic novels exist. I’ve been using the term graphic novel for over 15 years now. Most people in the community have an idea of what that term means to them.

You seemed to be for dropping the term all together! That I don’t understand. I and many others have been using the term graphic novel for some time to describe many of the books I talked about earlier. If so many people use the word and have an idea, albeit informal idea, of what it means, why drop the term altogether.

My second point was that people referring to comics (ie. floppies) as graphic novels is not a problem; the fact that they don’t understand the diversity comics are capable of is!

I don’t care what people call comics when they come asking me about them. I can correct the terminology easily enough. What’s hard to correct is the limited vision most people have of comics.

Should the media be throwing the GN word around like it’s feces at a monkey party? (I don’t know where that came from )

No but should we drop the word altogether because they refuse to learn what it means.

No.

So to recap, I’m am for education about comics but not for the limiting of the vocabulary I use to talk about them.

And I heard you pause when Tim Lasiuta used the term graphic novel in his interview with you.

(no point there, I got a chuckle since I had just read this post of yours a few days before. Time and a place for everything and he was using the term correctly :))

Brian Guay- FOR EDUCATION!! :):)

And you both proved my point. The term is not being used for it’s intended purpose. It’s new purpose is to manipulate the public and to REPLACE the existing monicer and that’s not right. Graphic novel is not a description, it’s a marketing tool.

Books have different names to describe what type of book it is, graphic novel is being used to describe everything comics and that is incorrect. People need to be educated about proper terminology.

Dude.

The term “graphic novel” was supposedly invented by Will Eisner, one of the most widely respected comic creators ever. It was invented to sell a comic to a publisher that wouldn’t look at a comic. In other words, for marketing reasons.

And it continues to be used for marketing purposes, by those both within and outside of the comic industry (from a creator point of view, the first person that I need to sell something to is a publisher, and if they’re only willing to look at “graphic novels”, well…). I don’t know of any comic creators that fancy themselves “graphic novelists”, but Joe Quesada is currently attempting to brand Marvel’s books as “graphic literature.” There is marketing going on.

And it is working, or everyone outside the medium wouldn’t be jumping on the term and using it to describe anything longer than your average Dilbert comic strip.

As Brian noted, there are different terms for different forms of prose storytelling, largely based on arbitrary length considerations. Why should there be only comic strips and comic books? Why can’t there be a term used to denote something with a different intent than servicing company-owned trademarks for the rest of eternity?

Foley

For years I’ve had a good idea of what I think a graphic novel is; a comic that is of a lofty size of pages.

While it wasn’t published as such to begin with, Watchmen is a graphic novel, to me. From Hell (while I have not started reading it yet) also seems to fit the bill, in my mind.

For myself there is no problem with having different terms of movies, films, shows, short films, motion pictures, feature films or on another side; books, novels, tombs, novella, short stories. So why the problem with comics?

In my mind it’s not the term that people use to talk about comics that is the problem but the manner in which they talk about them.

I say let the terms flow as they may. As more people start to read and accept “graphic novels” the more will look at their graphic novels on the shelf and say “Heh, I guess I read comic books.”