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Jeff W Williams
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 August 2007
Location: United States
Posts: 299
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| Posted: 07 March 2009 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | 1
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"Graphic Books" is reasonable, avoiding any semantics involved in terms like graphic novel and comic book. I'm kind of pleased to see the NYT doing this, even if they aren't as relevant as they used to be.
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Steve Richter
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 87
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| Posted: 07 March 2009 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | 2
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>DC and Marvel got into a little skirmish over who "owned" the terms "graphic
novel", "bookshelf edition" and "prestige format".
++++++++++
After DC published Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" retailers and fans started using the term "Dark Knight format" to refer to other books in the same format (e.g., Howie Chaykin's Blackhawk). DC was afraid they would lose their trademark on "Dark Knight" if the term became a generic phrase for "squarebound comic book." Therefore, in order to protect their trademark DC invented the term "prestige format" and began to use it to describe those books. Marvel used "bookshelf edition" presumably because they wanted their own term and did not want to be seen as copying or following DC.
SLR
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Michael Heide
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 July 2007
Location: Germany
Posts: 398
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| Posted: 08 March 2009 at 12:35am | IP Logged | 3
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Contract with God? Graphic Novel.
The latest issue of Iron Man? Not a Graphic Novel.
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Lars Johansson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 June 2004
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6113
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| Posted: 08 March 2009 at 5:12am | IP Logged | 4
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Also : "Läderlappen" is the swedish name of the famous german opera "Die Fliedermaus", making the comparison acceptable.
I'm not into opera, but the Swedish version I have seen was not a real opera, rather some sort of cabare. They gave it a funny title to match.
And finally : There is to my knowledge no meaning of the swedish word "Lapp" that translates as "lap" in english.
The free dictionary says
a. A part that overlaps.
b. The amount by which one part overlaps another.
And this is dennotatively what I find it to be too. The first lapp I saw when I was three years old a kid with an overlapped eye. That was to enhance his vision on his bad eye. ISo the Leatherlap stands. The first time I wrote about Leatherlappen I wrote Piece of Leather, so I like your translation too.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133584
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| Posted: 08 March 2009 at 7:39am | IP Logged | 5
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"Graphic Books" is reasonable, avoiding any semantics involved in terms like
graphic novel and comic book. I'm kind of pleased to see the NYT doing
this, even if they aren't as relevant as they used to be.
••
But they're not books. They're magazines.
This could be a core problem in and of itself. I can grab a copy of READER'S
DIGEST, one of COSMO, one of POPULAR MECHANICS, one of NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC, one of SKEPTIC, one of PLAYBOY, etc, etc, and despite their
very different sizes, bindings and content, I doubt anyone would be
prepared to argue that none of them are "magazines". For some reason
comics got ghettoized right out of the gate -- even tho in their original
format they were larger, thicker, and cost the same as TIME or NEWSWEEK.
Stan took a swing at changing the perceptions, of course, by declaring
FANTASTIC FOUR the "World's Greatest Comic Magazine" right there on the
cover. Oddly, even as a kid I found that vaguely pretentious -- not the
claim of greatness, which I would not have debated, but the idea that the
package was a "magazine". Yet, that is exactly what comics are.
Except, of course, for the elitists who like to refer to them -- disdainfully --
as "pamphlets".
Which they aren't, either.
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Lars Johansson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 June 2004
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6113
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| Posted: 08 March 2009 at 8:03am | IP Logged | 6
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I would never call them books in Swedish. Go and ask for a Stalmannen book and you will leave empty handed. I called them books since 1) I want to be polite and use the words you use, you Americans are very polite, so are you JB, 2) They are smaller in size than Time/Life and you could be orienting yourself by looking at page size, not thickness. We don't call them magazines either, but "tidning" (newspapers), since they are thin and bendable. Magazines would be the correct word here too.
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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17701
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| Posted: 08 March 2009 at 8:18am | IP Logged | 7
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"Graphic Books"
---
GROOKS!
No... ?
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Robert Walsh
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 24 July 2008
Posts: 456
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| Posted: 08 March 2009 at 9:12am | IP Logged | 8
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A trade paperback or hard cover is not a magazine. They're books.
Seems the convention is to call the magazines "comic books" while
calling the books "graphic novels" or "graphic books". And it is a fairly
important distiction to it wallet. I shop at Borders a lot and I get coupons
from them. I get no discount on magazines or comic books, but do get
discounts on books and graphic novels.
We need to call the books something different because magazines and
books are treating as two different things by bookstores. Magazines are
not kept in stock. Books are.
Graphic novels (or whatever you want to call them) need to be
distinquished from comic books for this reason. It eliminates confusion.
Insisting that graphic novels are comic books creates confusion for
businesses. Even if the original term is technically correct.
Trade paperbacks doesn't work because bookstores use that term for a
broader range of products. I own lots of trade paperbacks. Less than a
quarter are comics. Having a section in a bookstore for trade paperbacks
(when you mean comics) would be as confusing as clnaming that section
"hard covers".
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Luke Styer
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 1515
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| Posted: 08 March 2009 at 10:30am | IP Logged | 9
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I'm basically fine with "comic books" even though they're generally not comic and more magazine than book (though the word "book" at least sometimes seems to include magazines).
As far as "graphic novel" goes, I think it has a bit of a pretentious ring to it, but not enough to bug me too much. If we're not going to call every comic a graphic novel (and we don't call every piece of prose writing a novel, so I don't see why every comic should be a graphic novel), I'd probably focus less on format-of-original-release and more on length and the degree to which the story is self-contained.
As far as length, I'd be looking for about 100 pages at least.
How self-contained? That's a little less clear to me. I think that a collection of five or six issues out of an ongoing (non-anthology) series probably wouldn't qualify, but a collection of a miniseries probably would.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133584
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| Posted: 08 March 2009 at 10:34am | IP Logged | 10
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Another flaw in the term "graphic novel" springs from how few of them are
truly novels. Even THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVEL, for which the coin
was termed, is not really a novel so much as a chapter. It cannot
be read as complete unto itself, for instance. (This was one of the reasons I
insisted on including "origin" sequences in DARKSEID vs GALACTUS. Mark
Gruenwald asked "Why? We all know this stuff." and I invoked the old "every
issue is the first issue for somebody" rule.)
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
Robotmod
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 36100
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| Posted: 08 March 2009 at 11:31am | IP Logged | 11
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John Byrne wrote:
Except, of course, for the elitists who like to refer to them -- disdainfully --
as "pamphlets".
Which they aren't, either. |
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Or "floppies" a disdainful term I also hate.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 08 March 2009 at 11:37am | IP Logged | 12
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Sad thing is, "comicbook" is a term used with disdain my many -- even
many in the industry. (When I got into the Biz it was fashionable to call
them "funnybooks", a term which I used many times myself, Then I
began to realize it fell into the same slot as calling Batman "Bats". It
seems friendly and chummy, but underneath there is that current of
disrespect. And if we don't respect these things. . . !)
As most of you probably know, I was on a quest for a long time for a
term that was more accurately descriptive than "comicbook", but not
because I looked upon the term with any kind of disdain. Rather, I
wanted something that others, most especially civilians, would
instantly comprehend.
(Paul Kupperberg has mentioned more than once that his father used two
terms for comics. If they had superheroes in them, he called them
"supers". Everything else -- everything else -- he called "popeyes".)
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