Summary
Storytelling through sequential art has been around for centuries. In the early 1500s, the conquistador Hern n Cortez acquired an ancient 36-foot-long manuscript depicting the trials of the Mixtec folk hero 8-Deer Tiger Claw. The French embroidered the Bayeux Tapestry to describe the Norman conquest of 1066. In the 1700s, William Hogarth created popular etchings and paintings like A Harlot's Progress that were intended to be read in sequence as a critique on English society. It was not until the cheap serials of the mid-1900s that comics were considered juvenile superhero punch- outs. That perception has changed with the recent emergence of interest in the graphic-novel form.
With so much product and variety in the world, any attempt to throw a blanket over an entire medium -- or prove that no such blanket exists -- is folly. Graphic novels cannot even be limited to a single art form. They are a marriage between visual art (a stand- alone panel), visual storytelling (panels in sequence), writing, and even music (as the stories are told in beats and rhythm from one panel to the next). This combination can increase the chances of a work being bad. But great art in any medium invents a fully realized, imaginary world and uses it to show us new and wonderful things. Graphic novels have that power as much as any medium.See the full content of this document
Extract
Drawing Power
Perhaps no recent work exemplifies this as much as Paul Pope's 100% (Vertigo, 2005). The book is set in New York City's future -- a run-down place where hovercars fly through row-house canyons. Nothing is shocking anymore in the art world, which bleeds into the strip-club scene while violence permeates everything. Most ...
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