As the exact definition of the graphic novel is debated, the origins of the form are open to interpretation.
The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck is the oldest recognized American example of comics used to this end. It originated as the 1828 publication
Histoire de Mr. Vieux Bois by Swiss caricaturist
Rodolphe Töpffer, and was first published in English translation in 1841 by London's Tilt & Bogue, which used an 1833 Paris pirate edition. The first American edition was published in 1842 by Wilson & Company in New York City using the original printing plates from the 1841 edition. Another early predecessor is
Journey to the Gold Diggins by Jeremiah Saddlebags by brothers J. A. D. and D. F. Read, inspired by
The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck. In the United States, there is a long tradition of reissuing previously published comic strips in book form. In 1897, the Hearst Syndicate published such a collection of
The Yellow Kid by Richard Outcault and it quickly became a best seller.
1920s to 1960s The 1920s saw a revival of the
medieval woodcut tradition, with Belgian
Frans Masereel cited as "the undisputed king" of this revival. His works include
Passionate Journey (1919). American
Lynd Ward also worked in this tradition, publishing ''
Gods' Man'', in 1929 and going on to publish more during the 1930s. Other prototypical examples from this period include American
Milt Gross's
He Done Her Wrong (1930), a
wordless comic published as a hardcover book, and
Une semaine de bonté (1934), a novel in sequential images composed of collage by the surrealist painter
Max Ernst. Similarly,
Charlotte Salomon's
Life? or Theater? (composed 1941–43) combines images, narrative, and captions. "picture novel"
It Rhymes with Lust (1950), one precursor of the graphic novel. Cover art by
Matt Baker and
Ray Osrin. The 1940s saw the launching of
Classics Illustrated, a
comic-book series that primarily adapted notable,
public domain novels into standalone comic books for young readers.
Citizen 13660, an illustrated, novel length retelling of
Japanese internment during World War II, was published in 1946. In 1947,
Fawcett Comics published
Comics Novel #1: "Anarcho, Dictator of Death", a 52-page comic dedicated to one story. In 1950,
St. John Publications produced the
digest-sized, adult-oriented "picture novel"
It Rhymes with Lust, a
film noir-influenced slice of steeltown life starring a scheming, manipulative redhead named Rust. Touted as "an original full-length novel" on its cover, the 128-page digest by
pseudonymous writer "Drake Waller" (
Arnold Drake and
Leslie Waller), penciler
Matt Baker and inker
Ray Osrin proved successful enough to lead to an unrelated second picture novel,
The Case of the Winking Buddha by
pulp novelist Manning Lee Stokes and illustrator Charles Raab. In the same year,
Gold Medal Books released
Mansion of Evil by Joseph Millard. Presaging Will Eisner's multiple-story graphic novel
A Contract with God (1978), cartoonist
Harvey Kurtzman wrote and drew the four-story mass-market paperback ''
Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book'' (
Ballantine Books #338K), published in 1959. By the late 1960s, American comic book creators were becoming more adventurous with the form.
Gil Kane and
Archie Goodwin self-published a 40-page,
magazine-format comics novel,
His Name Is... Savage (Adventure House Press) in 1968—the same year
Marvel Comics published two issues of
The Spectacular Spider-Man in a similar format. Columnist and comic-book writer
Steven Grant also argues that
Stan Lee and
Steve Ditko's
Doctor Strange story in
Strange Tales #130–146, although published serially from 1965 to 1966, is "the first American graphic novel". Similarly, critic Jason Sacks referred to the 13-issue "Panther's Rage"—comics' first-known titled, self-contained, multi-issue story arc—that ran from 1973 to 1975 in the
Black Panther series in Marvel's
Jungle Action as "Marvel's first graphic novel". Meanwhile, in continental Europe, the tradition of collecting serials of popular strips such as
The Adventures of Tintin or
Asterix led to long-form narratives published initially as serials. In January 1968,
Vida del Che was published in Argentina, a graphic novel written by
Héctor Germán Oesterheld and drawn by
Alberto Breccia. The book told the story of
Che Guevara in comics form, but the military dictatorship confiscated the books and destroyed them. It was later re-released in corrected versions. By 1969, the author
John Updike, who had entertained ideas of becoming a cartoonist in his youth, addressed the Bristol Literary Society, on "
the death of the novel". Updike offered examples of new areas of exploration for novelists, declaring he saw "no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic strip novel masterpiece".
Modern era and
artist-plotter
Gil Kane Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin's
Blackmark (1971), a
science fiction/
sword-and-sorcery paperback published by
Bantam Books, did not use the term originally; the back-cover blurb of the 30th-anniversary edition () calls it, retroactively, the first American graphic novel. The
Academy of Comic Book Arts presented Kane with a special 1971
Shazam Award for what it called "his paperback comics novel". Whatever the nomenclature,
Blackmark is a 119-page story of comic-book art, with captions and
word balloons, published in a traditional book format. European creators were also experimenting with the longer narrative in comics form. In the United Kingdom,
Raymond Briggs was producing works such as
Father Christmas (1972) and
The Snowman (1978), which he himself described as being from the "bottomless abyss of strip cartooning", although they, along with such other Briggs works as the more mature
When the Wind Blows (1982), have been re-marketed as graphic novels in the wake of the term's popularity. Briggs noted, however, that he did not like that term too much.
First self-proclaimed graphic novels: 1976–1978 In 1976, the term "graphic novel" appeared in print to describe three separate works: •
Chandler: Red Tide by
Jim Steranko, published in August 1976 under the
Fiction Illustrated imprint and released in both regular 8.5 x 11" size, and a
digest size designed to be sold on newsstands, used the term "graphic novel" in its introduction and "a
visual novel" on its cover, predating by two years the usage of this term for
Will Eisner's
A Contract with God. It is therefore considered the first modern graphic novel to be done as an original work, and not collected from previously published segments. •
Bloodstar by
Richard Corben (adapted from a story by
Robert E. Howard), Morning Star Press, 1976, also a non-reprinted original presentation, used the term 'graphic novel' to categorize itself as well on its dust jacket and introduction. •
George Metzger's
Beyond Time and Again, serialized in
underground comix from 1967 to 1972, was subtitled "A Graphic Novel" on the inside title page when collected as a 48-page, black-and-white, hardcover book published by Kyle & Wheary. The following year,
Terry Nantier, who had spent his teenage years living in Paris, returned to the United States and formed
Flying Buttress Publications, later to incorporate as
NBM Publishing (
Nantier, Beall, Minoustchine), and published
Racket Rumba, a 50-page spoof of the
noir-
detective genre, written and drawn by the single-name French artist Loro. Nantier followed this with
Enki Bilal's
The Call of the Stars. The company marketed these works as "graphic albums". The first six issues of writer-artist
Jack Katz's 1974
Comics and Comix Co. series
The First Kingdom were collected as a
trade paperback (
Pocket Books, March 1978), which described itself as "the first graphic novel". Issues of the comic had described themselves as "graphic prose", or simply as a novel. Similarly,
Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species by writer
Don McGregor and artist
Paul Gulacy (
Eclipse Books, August 1978) — the first graphic novel sold in the newly created "
direct market" of United States comic-book shops — was called a "graphic album" by the author in interviews, though the publisher dubbed it a "comic novel" on its credits page. "Graphic album" was also the term used the following year by
Gene Day for his hardcover short-story collection
Future Day (
Flying Buttress Press). Another early graphic novel, though it carried no self-description, was
The Silver Surfer (
Simon & Schuster/Fireside Books, August 1978), by Marvel Comics'
Stan Lee and
Jack Kirby. Significantly, this was published by a traditional book publisher and distributed through bookstores, as was
cartoonist Jules Feiffer's
Tantrum (
Alfred A. Knopf, 1979) described on its dust jacket as a "novel-in-pictures".
Adoption of the term . Hyperbolic descriptions of longer
comic books as "novels" appear on covers as early as the 1940s. Early issues of
DC Comics'
All-Flash, for example, described their contents as "novel-length stories" and "full-length four chapter novels". In its earliest known citation, comic-book reviewer Richard Kyle used the term "graphic novel" in
Capa-Alpha #2 (November 1964), a newsletter published by the Comic Amateur Press Alliance, and again in an article in
Bill Spicer's magazine
Fantasy Illustrated #5 (Spring 1966). Kyle, inspired by European and East Asian graphic albums (especially Japanese
manga), used the label to designate comics of an artistically "serious" sort. Following this, Spicer, with Kyle's acknowledgment, edited and published a periodical titled
Graphic Story Magazine in the fall of 1967. The term "graphic novel" began to grow in popularity months after it appeared on the cover of the
trade paperback edition (though not the
hardcover edition) of
Will Eisner's
A Contract with God (October 1978). This collection of
short stories was a mature, complex work focusing on the lives of ordinary people in the real world based on Eisner's own experiences. One scholar used graphic novels to introduce the concept of graphiation, the theory that the entire personality of an artist is visible through his or her visual representation of a certain character, setting, event, or object in a novel, and can work as a means to examine and analyze drawing style. Even though Eisner's
A Contract with God was published in 1978 by a smaller company, Baronet Press, it took Eisner over a year to find a publishing house that would allow his work to reach the mass market. In its introduction, Eisner cited
Lynd Ward's 1930s woodcuts as an inspiration. The critical and commercial success of
A Contract with God helped to establish the term "graphic novel" in common usage, and many sources have incorrectly credited Eisner with being the first to use it. These included the
Time magazine website in 2003, which said in its correction: "Eisner acknowledges that the term 'graphic novel' had been coined prior to his book. But, he says, 'I had not known at the time that someone had used that term before'. Nor does he take credit for creating the first graphic book". One of the earliest contemporaneous applications of the term post-Eisner came in 1979, when
Blackmark sequel—published a year after
A Contract with God though written and drawn in the early 1970s—was labeled a "graphic novel" on the cover of Marvel Comics' black-and-white comics magazine
Marvel Preview #17 (Winter 1979), where
Blackmark: The Mind Demons premiered: its 117-page contents remained intact, but its panel-layout reconfigured to fit 62 pages. Following this, Marvel from 1982 to 1988 published the
Marvel Graphic Novel line of 10" × 7" trade paperbacks—although numbering them like comic books, from #1 (
Jim Starlin's
The Death of Captain Marvel) to #35 (
Dennis O'Neil,
Mike Kaluta, and
Russ Heath's ''Hitler's Astrologer'', starring the radio and
pulp fiction character the
Shadow, and released in hardcover). Marvel commissioned original graphic novels from such creators as
John Byrne,
J. M. DeMatteis,
Steve Gerber, graphic-novel pioneer McGregor,
Frank Miller,
Bill Sienkiewicz,
Walt Simonson,
Charles Vess, and
Bernie Wrightson. While most of these starred Marvel
superheroes, others, such as
Rick Veitch's
Heartburst featured original SF/fantasy characters; others still, such as
John J. Muth's
Dracula, featured adaptations of literary stories or characters; and one,
Sam Glanzman's ''A Sailor's Story'', was a true-life,
World War II naval tale. In Frank Miller's introduction to
First Comics' English reprint of
Lone Wolf and Cub #2 (June 1987), he discussed the mixed message of the term "graphic novel" replacing "comics" in popular culture: and
Titan Books, respectively Cartoonist
Art Spiegelman's
Pulitzer Prize-winning
Maus (1980-91), helped establish both the term and the concept of graphic novels in the minds of the mainstream public. Two
DC Comics book reprints of self-contained miniseries did likewise, though they were not originally published as graphic novels:
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986), a collection of Frank Miller's four-part comic-book series featuring an older Batman faced with the problems of a dystopian future; and
Watchmen (1986-1987), a collection of
Alan Moore and
Dave Gibbons' 12-issue
limited series in which Moore notes he "set out to explore, amongst other things, the dynamics of power in a post-
Hiroshima world". These works and others were reviewed in newspapers and magazines, leading to increased coverage. Sales of graphic novels increased, with
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, for example, lasting 40 weeks on a UK best-seller list. In India, the graphic novel
Bhimayana (2011) has been studied as an example of how the form can move beyond comics into a serious literary genre that addresses
caste and social justice.
European adoption of the term Outside North America, Eisner's
A Contract with God and Spiegelman's
Maus led to the popularization of the expression "graphic novel" as well. Until then, most European countries used neutral, descriptive terminology that referred to the form of the medium, not the contents or the publishing form. In Francophone Europe for example, the expression
bandes dessinées — which literally translates as "drawn strips" – is used, while the terms
stripverhaal ("strip story") and
tegneserie ("drawn series") are used by the Dutch/Flemish and Scandinavians respectively. European
comics studies scholars have observed that Americans originally used
graphic novel for everything that deviated from their standard,
32-page comic book format, meaning that all larger-sized, longer Franco-Belgian
comic albums, regardless of their contents, fell under the heading. Writer-artist
Bryan Talbot claims that the first collection of his
The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, published by
Proutt in 1982, was the first British graphic novel. American comic critics have occasionally referred to European graphic novels as "Euro-comics", and attempts were made in the late 1980s to cross-fertilize the American market with these works. American publishers
Catalan Communications and
NBM Publishing released translated titles, predominantly from the backlog catalogs of
Casterman and
Les Humanoïdes Associés.
Autobiographical graphic novels "As Leigh Gilmore explains, autobiography 'draws its authority less from its resemblance to real life than from its proximity to discourses of truth and identity, less from reference or mimesis than from the cultural power of truth telling'".
Maus was the first major autobiographical graphic novel telling the story of what life was like during the Holocaust. Other popular autobiographical graphic novels are Marjane Satrapi's
Persepolis, and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home.
Persepolis is about Satrapi growing up during the Iranian Revolution; it's a book telling her story but also what all the Iranians went through during this violent time in their history.
Fun Home is a book dealing with the author's complicated relationship with her father and both her and her father coming out. Autobiographical stories always vary because people have so many different experiences and no two stories are the same. == Criticism of the term ==