Since
the dawn of the written word, accepted storytelling methodologies have gone
through countless revisions. Today’s graphic novels represent a modern twist on
the century-old medium of comics, which have foundations that are much older
than just Superman and Batman. McCloud (2005), world renowned comic book
auteur, noted that since the printed word in the 1400s, “all of the artifacts
of modern comics start[ed] to present themselves: rectilinear panel
arrangements, simple line drawings without tone and a left-to-right
reading sequence” (9:55). Despite having been around since the Gutenberg Bible,
comics have typically been looked down upon by librarians as “just trash”
(Sheppard, 2007, p. 12). With unique stories that fit nearly every genre
represented by publishers, and a plethora of talented artists and writers,
graphic novels should be seen as important additions to every public library
collection. This paper will serve as an introduction for novices at graphic
novel readers’ advisory by presenting a handful of important graphic novels
that epitomize several genres as well as possibilities for passive readers’
advisory and displays.
ALAN
MOORE
Before exploring genres with
excellent graphic novel representation, there is one graphic novel auteur that
deserves special recognition. Of the dozens of authors and artists who are
recognizable for consolidating consensus for graphic novels as a format of
literature, none may be more identifiable than Alan Moore. Since 1978, his
works have unified the previously separate mediums of comic books and
literature. He has singlehandedly redefined graphic novels in horror,
superhero, adventure, and dystopian genres of literature. During the 1980s, he
penned three cornerstone graphic novels: V
for Vendetta, Watchmen, and Batman: The Killing Joke. Any many ways,
the three books, which were critical and financial successes, are
representative of the wave of graphic novel revisionism that took place in the
1980s. All three books are extremely dark and explore moral and philosophical
dilemmas regarding power, gender, and the state versus the people. V for Vendetta explores a British
fascist police state that arises after a nuclear war in the 1980s. Its
anarchist protagonist, only known as V, wears a Guy Fawkes mask and commits
theatrical terrorism against the government to inspire the downtrodden people
of Britain to revolt. Batman: The Killing
Joke follows the origins of the Joker, the enigmatic, insane, and
nihilistic mirror image of Batman. The novel is now remembered for crippling
then-Batgirl Barbara Gordon in a scene of violence unlike anything seen in the
medium prior.
Moore’s
magnum opus is without a doubt Watchmen. Grossman (2010), a prominent
literature critic, included it in Time Magazine’s 100 best novels since 1923,
noting it to be “with ambitions above its station” (para. 1). Watchmen is realistic portrayal of a world
that has had costumed heroes since the Second World War, but has forced them
into either retirement or forced servitude of the U.S. government. It reads as
a mystery, science fiction thriller, and alternate history. It is usually
brought up in conversation when discussing graphic novels as literature and
tells a story that could not have been told in any other format.
Since
Watchmen, he went on to pen a
critically acclaimed gothic horror From
Hell, which speculated about the motives of Jack the Ripper, and the
rousing Victorian-era superteam adventure The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which featured popular characters from
that era’s literature in new adventures as a team tasked with protected the
British Empire. These five books are excellent points of entry for adults
wanting to start reading graphic novels, and are generally accepted by
libraries across the United States to be important works of fiction and should
be included in any adult fiction collection.
BIOGRAPHIES
AND MEMOIRS
Maus by Art Spiegelman is a highly
revered work of nonfiction. In 1992, “it became the first graphic novel to win
a Pulitzer Prize” (Maus, n.d., para. 1). It recounts the horrors of the
Holocaust through the postmodern technique of depicting people as animals; Jews
are represented as mice, Germans as cats, and non-Jewish Poles as pigs. In many
ways, it is an extension of the “new journalism” exemplified by Truman Capote,
Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe. By not presenting a realistic portrayal of
the Holocaust and his father, Spiegelman offers a multilayered story that tells
as much between panels as it does inside.
Since the release and
success of Maus, the graphic novel
medium has become a hotbed for heartfelt, powerful memoirs and biographies,
including Blankets, Our Cancer Year, Persepolis, Pyongyang: A
Journey in North Korea, Epileptic,
and Fun Home. These graphic novels
are distinctly different in terms of reliability, morality, philosophy, and
geography.
There is no shortage of
amazing graphic novel memoirs of youth and family. Craig Thompson’s hauntingly
beautiful black and white Blankets is
a bildungsroman autobiography that depicts his struggles with growing up in a
Baptist home while balancing out first love, spirituality, and his relationship
with his brother. Harvey Pekar, famous for his American Splendor books of the 1980s, wrote Our Cancer Year with his wife Joyce Brabner. It is a stark and
harrowing graphic novel following Harvey’s bout with testicular cancer, the
painful treatment needed to save his life over the course of a year, and their
decision to adopt a child. David Beauchard’s Epileptic also explores the impact illness has on family. As the
author’s brother starts to lose his battle to severe epilepsy, the graphic
novel slowly becomes more and more fantastical as the author retreats into his
own imagination to deal with the fears they deal with on a daily basis.
Persepolis
depicts Marjane Satrapi’s adolescence in Iran during and after the Islamic
Revolution in 1979, her young adult years in Europe, and early adulthood after
returning to Iran through both humor and sadness. It is one of the most
successful and respected post-revolution literary portrayals of Iranian culture
and life. If Persepolis provided an
intimate portrayal of misunderstood country and society, Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea is a
descent into the madness and absurd of totalitarian North Korea. He witnesses
the cult of personality firsthand through the ubiquitous brainwashing of the
nation’s citizens, all of whom are healthy and young. Delisle is left to wonder
where the country’s old and disabled, to which he is told that all Korean’s are
born strong, healthy, and virile. Perhaps the best post-Maus graphic memoir is Fun
Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. It recounts her childhood in
rural Pennsylvania and her bond with her father. The book explores the author’s
sexual orientation as well as gender roles and suicide within her family. It
has become a resounding critical success that has generated controversy in some
states, but has been embraced by those in culture studies.
LITERARY
FICTION
While it may seem
counterintuitive to include graphic novels into literary fiction, there are a
multitude of graphic novels that are believed to hold considerable literary
merit. Love and Rockets started as a
science fiction fueled spectacle over thirty years ago, and it now has well
over twenty graphic novel volumes in print. It was a pioneer in developing a
uniquely Latin American voice in comics and popular culture. Brothers Gilbert
and Jaime Hernandez have been writing Love
and Rockets intermittently and independently from one another since the
early 1980s. Gilbert’s stories are fantastical and feature a cast of characters
from a Mexican village. Jaime’s stories feature two primary characters: Maggie
Chascarrillo and Hopey Glass, who are best friends and, from time to time,
lovers. While their stories are wildly different, they touch upon literary
notions of love, friendship, community, race and family.
Cult classic Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes, addressed
popular culture and the monotony of everyday life from the perspective of two
cynical teenaged girls. Deeply embedded into the realm of dark comedy, the
bildungsroman Ghost World seems as if
it should have been written by Woody Allen. While this book is not recommended
for everyone, its biting commentary on the absurdity of some aspects of life
will work for some teenagers and those readers who appreciate books like A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy
Toole.
HORROR
Horror is a genre
that has long been seen in comics. Pulp horror comics of the 1940s and 1950s
were routinely published for a generation of baby boomer boys who had no
interest in the pre-war superheroes of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and
Captain America. When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby revolutionized the superhero
comic book in the 1960s, genre graphic novels were no longer popular with
children or their parents. Since the evolution of the graphic novel in the
1980s, two horror graphic novels have transfixed audiences: The Sandman and The Walking Dead.
Today,
Neil Gaiman is one of the most respected authors in the world. American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard
Book have won numerous accolades and are representative of some of the best
science fiction and dark fantasy written in recent memory. Gaiman gained
international renown with his Sandman series.
While not horror in the strictest sense, The
Sandman in many ways is the modern version of the gothic dark fantasy /
horror of H.P. Lovecraft. The Sandman
follows Dream of the Endless, also known as Morpheus, as he travels through the
Endless aspects of reality, such as death, desire, and despair. It goes through
a vast array of mythology and history in its pages.
In
stark contrast to The Sandman is extremely
violent and horrific The Walking Dead,
Robert Kirkman’s ridiculously successful comic series that has spawned a
television show and numerous video games. Following the outbreak of a deadly
virus that infects the entire world’s population, the dead of humanity walk the
earth feeding upon the flesh of the living. But rather than focus on the
horrors of the “walkers,” Kirkman decides to explore the relationships of the
humans that remain and the horrors that groups and communities inflict upon
each other following the end of the world. He focuses on a group of survivors
from around the area of Atlanta who make their way north to Alexandria,
Virginia, encountering tyrants, rapists, and cannibals along the way to
remaking civilization. Being on two ends of the horror spectrum, these two
graphic novels are excellent entry points for fans of Stephen King and horror
fiction in general.
SCIENCE
FICTION
Along with horror,
science fiction was a regularly published comic genre in the immediate postwar
years. In recent years, science fiction has made a huge comeback in graphic
novels. While Black Hole, written by
Charles Burns, sounds like a novel about space from the title alone, it is
actually a story about a sexually transmitted disease that mutates teenagers in
horrific and grotesque ways. Like all great genre fiction, Black Hole takes an element of a genre to make an important
statement about society itself. In this case, Burns uses the disease to start a
discussion about sexual awakening and being a social outcast.
While
Black Hole is a microcosm of science
fiction, Y: The Last Man is epic
science fiction unlike any other. Perhaps the best science fiction story of the
last twenty years, Y: The Last Man
follows the last man, Yorick Brown, and his pet male monkey after a mysterious
disease kills off all mammals with a Y chromosome. The graphic novels world
hops to understand how such a calamity would affect the world. Eventually, the
reader begins to unravel the world politics and scientific espionage that caused
the end of manhood to occur, and the moral ramifications of the end of “man.”
It is easy to understand that this novel would be attractive for several types
of readers, especially those who loved Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or other dystopian novels.
PASSIVE READERS’ ADVISORY
Because of content and worries of
controversy, many public libraries tuck adult graphic novels deep into the
stacks and rarely promote the wealth of stories they contain. As a readers’
advisor, there are numerous ways to endorse the adult graphic novel collection
for your patrons. Zellers (2012) states that a few ways to promote is to “place
books face-out on the stands, include them in themed lists, and incorporate
them into displays” (para. 5). Putting the graphic novels face out recreates
the feeling of going to a comic book store, and it allows for the colorful
covers to sell the books for the reader. Creating themed lists, such as “10
Horror Graphic Novels to Scare You This Halloween,” will attract readers and
non-readers in the library to the collection. Incorporating one graphic novel
out of every ten books in a display will demonstrate to readers of all genres
that there are graphic novels for every genre, and most likely at least one
that will speak to every reader. For example, if highlighting adventure novels,
take the initiative to include The League
of Extraordinary Gentlemen and create a connection to each of the
characters the book contains.
CONCLUSION
Graphic
novels need not be scary to readers’ advisors…even the scary ones like The Walking Dead. With a little work in
reading about graphic novels, and maybe even read one or three, you can
incorporate graphic novels into advising for every genre. Just like novels,
they have read-alikes and important groundbreaking authors who revolutionize
the medium with every book, such as Alan Moore. Even through passive methods of
readers’ advisory, such as displays or even simply placing the books cover out
will increase interest in the collection and its circulation.
REFERENCES
Grossman, L. (2010). Watchmen. Retrieved from
http://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/watchmen-1986-by-alan-moore-dave-gibbons/
Maus. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 4, 2015, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus
McCloud, S. (2005). The visual magic of comics [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics?language=en#t-707503
Sheppard, A. (2007). Graphic novels in the
library. Arkansas Libraries, 64(3), 12-16.
Zellers, J. (2012). Graphic nonfiction
readers’ advisory. Retrieved from
http://www.ebscohost.com/novelist/novelist-special/graphic-nonfiction-readers-advisory
APPENDIX
These are the graphic novels detailed in the
paper that represent great entry points for readers and non-readers alike.
B, D.
(2005). Epileptic. New
York: Pantheon Books.
Bechdel,
A. (2006). Fun home: A family
tragicomic. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Brabner,
J., Pekar, H., & Stack, F. (1994). Our cancer year. New York: Four Walls Eight
Windows.
Burns,
C. (2005). Black hole. New
York: Pantheon Books.
Clowes,
D. (2001). Ghost world.
Seattle, Wash: Fantagraphics.
Delisle,
G., & Dascher, H. (2005). Pyongyang: A journey in North Korea.
Montréal,
Quebec: Drawn & Quarterly.
Gaiman,
N., Kieth, S., Dringenberg, M., Jones, M., Klein, T., Busch, R., Vozzo, D., ...
McKean, D. (1995). The sandman: Preludes & nocturnes. New
York: DC Comics.
Hernandez,
G., Hernandez, J., Hernandez, M., & Fantagraphics Books. (1982). Love
and rockets.
Stamford, CT: Fantagraphics Books.
Kirkman,
R., & Moore, T. (2005). The walking dead: [Vol. 1]. Orange, CA: Image
Comics.
Moore,
A., Bolland, B., & Starkings, R. (2008). Batman:
The killing joke. New York: DC
Comics.
Moore,
A., & Gibbons, D. (1987). Watchmen. New York: DC Comics Inc.
Moore,
A., Lloyd, D., Whitaker, S., Dodds, S., O'Connor, J., Craddock, S., Fell, E.,
...
Weare, T. (2005). V for vendetta. New York: Vertigo/DC Comics.
Moore,
A., Mullins, P., & Campbell, E. (2006). From
hell: Being a melodrama in sixteen
parts. Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions.
Moore,
A., & O'Neill, K. (2000). The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Vol. 1, 1898.
La Jolla, CA: America's Best Comics.
Satrapi,
M. (2003). Persepolis. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Spiegelman,
A. (1986). Maus: A survivor's tale. New York:
Pantheon Books.
Thompson,
C. (2003). Blankets: A graphic
novel. Marietta, Ga: Top Shelf.
Vaughan,
B. K., Guerra, P., Marzán, J., Rambo, P., & Robins, C. (2003). Y: The last
man : unmanned. New
York, N.Y: DC Comics.
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