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ackblom12:
Actually, I would definitely say they are separate genres of literature. They use the same medium, but even the ones based off of normal comics tend to have a very different feel and goal.
I mean, if you seriously can't see why there's a separate category for The Amazing Spiderman and Watchmen then damn.
Edit - Or to put it in a film manner, Graphic Novels tend to be to comics what Art House films are to cinema.
Jimmy the Squid:
Well you kind of do. When a piece of cinema (for lack of a better term for the over-arching medium) is intelligent, well-written, well directed, has good acting, beautiful costuming, cinematography and all that kind of thing, it is often referred to as a "film." When a motion picture is not any of those things, or otherwise inferior, it's often referred to as a "movie". It's not usually a concious thing but more of an effort to distinguish "films" as more worthy than "movies".
By the same token, something like Neil Gaiman's The Sandman or even the more mainstream stuff like some X-Men or Batman books are graphic novels, whereas things like Cathy, Hagar the Horrible or Ginger Meggs (you might not get that if you're not Australian) are comics.
Can you see the distinction?
ackblom12:
See, I don't think it's a matter of quality most of the time. Calvin and Hobbes isn't a graphic novel because it's a serial comic. It didn't really tell an overarching story except in very small doses. It was simply a collection of very high quality panel comics. Not to devalue it at all of course.
I think a better comparison might be Superman comics and Kingdom Come. The comics have no real beginning, they have no real end and they are regularly changing hands between different writers and artists. They even retcon the story on a semi regular basis to better suit the current writer's needs. Kingdom Come on the other hand was a self contained single storyline with a definite beginning an definite end. Despite the fact that it was based on a very long running franchise, minimal knowledge of Superman was required to enjoy the novel. It also had a much more mature and ambitious goal than the normal comics do.
Watchmen is further along the Graphic Novel line because it is not reliant on any mythos other than what's in the graphic novel itself. Having a bit of knowledge about the superhero genre certainly makes some points the novel makes more poignant, but even then, knowledge of the aura of fear and paranoia of the Cold War during the 80's and the hopeless feelings of the Vietnam genre are much more important for the story.
ackblom12:
I love Alan Moore and his work, but he's also one of the more pessimistic individuals on the planet.
The term Graphic Novel is of course abused by marketing departments in the comic genre to make things sound more "legitimate," but that doesn't change the fact that the term Graphic Novel has become a rather legitimate term to differentiate 2 subsections of the comic genre.
I would also definitely say you can't have a novel without an overarching story. Conan is a well known pulp character. He doesn't have a single novel written by his creator Robert E. Howard. He has plenty of short stories, but none of the collections of short stories are called novels because that is not what they are.
I would not call a collection of short stories about a single character (or set of characters) a novel and that's how I see Calvin & Hobbes.
KharBevNor:
Oh goddddsss.
THIS ARGUMENT.
THE WORST ARGUMENT.
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