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Recent examples of graphic novels reveal that comic books aren’t just for kids anymore.
What was the last graphic novel you read? If you answer with the question, “What is a graphic novel?” you have missed the boat. Graphic novels have been around since the 1970s, have a huge following and today are on college reading lists. Jump aboard and read one or two.
Remember those illustrated classics we read instead of assigned books in school? That’s a graphic novel. Today they are original stories, very sophisticated, bound like a book and often with very adult subject matter. The superhero lives on in this form alongside characters such as Toland, a hapless teenager coming of age in “Stuck Rubber Baby.” Homosexuality, the Holocaust and discrimination are fodder for the graphic book author. “Comics aren’t just for kids anymore.”
Jules Fieffer was a pioneer in this medium — the combining of art and word — in this century, but forerunners long ago knew the power of visuals. Manuscripts have been illuminated since the beginning of the written word; William Blake wrote a picture novel in the 1700s.
Two hundred and nine pages of black-and-white comic strips comprise “Stuck Rubber Baby” by Howard Cruise (Paradox Press, 1995). The 1960s civil rights battle in the South is the backdrop for the young white protagonist, who discovers he is anti-segregation and anti-heterosexual. The title means exactly what you think.
Art Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize for his creation “Maus” in 1986. Anthropomorphic animals are the characters in the story about his father surviving the Holocaust. “Maus” means “mouse” in German.
Controversy still swirls around graphic novels. Comedian Robin Williams said, “Is that a comic book? No! It’s a graphic novel. Is that porn? No! It’s adult entertainment.”
