Dear Geist,
I’m writing and drawing a book, a true story, and I don’t know what to call it. Comic book? Graphic novel? It’s about my cousin who was buried in the rubble for three days after the Haiti earthquake of 2010 and miraculously survived. I thought “graphic novel,” but it’s not a novel. Or “comic book,” but even though it has some humorous bits, it’s not a funny story. Help!
—Scribbler, Lethbridge AB
Dear Scribbler,
In Japan it’s manga, in Korea it’s manhwa, in continental Europe it’s bande déssinée (“drawn strips”), and so on. But North America and Britain are still wrestling with the umbrella terminology. Perhaps that’s because the form has developed more recently here; or because comics, which evokes newspaper funny pages or cheap 48-page superhero episodes in racks, is deemed too pedestrian for more high-toned works; or because comics implies “comical”—not accurate, as you say, for books like Maus, Persepolis or Clyde Fans. Interesting suggestions over the years include graphic album, drawn book, comic-strip novel, visual novel and picture novella. But graphic novel, which appeared in the 1970s, is the term that has stuck in the book business, even though some graphic novels aren’t novels and some prominent people in the biz think that label is too big for its pants. Art Spiegelman likes the word comix, which honours the older term without limiting it. Some writers and publishers have begun to add “graphic” to established writing genres and forms: graphic non-fiction, graphic memoir, graphic biography, graphic journalism.
In short, Scribbler, if you call your project a graphic novel, graphic memoir or graphic non-fiction, most people will get the drift. When it comes time to publish it, your agent and/or publisher will work with you on what to call it.
—The Editors
