GRAPHIC NOVELS ARE JUST ANOTHER NAME FOR COMICS! there, i said it

[Cuestionador]

I normally use "historieta" for the kind of serialized adult-oriented fantasy/sci-fi/horror/etc that was so prevalent during the 80s thanks to magazines like 1984, Métal Hurlant, Creepy, El Víbora etc, even though I know it can be used as a general term

There were great magazines! I have a couple of Viboras with Miyuki mata, some Zona84, three issues of Epic Illustrated, some issues of both volumes of Fierro and the Creepy Presents dedicated to Alex Toth and Bernie Wrightson (i love to obtain the Ditko and Corben volumes someday).

 

[MasterEn]

"GRAPHIC NOVELS ARE JUST ANOTHER NAME FOR COMICS! there, i said it"
i agree 100%

 

[Yuki Senoue]

, in the West, we don't have seperate distinct genres for comics like they do in Japan for comics (seinen, shonen, josei, shoujo, etc)

They aren't genres, they're demographics. Shonen is focused in adolescent boys, shoujo in adolescent girls, josei in young adult women and seinen in young adult men. A Shonen manga, just like any comic, can be a variety of genres, comedy, action, rom-com, etc. One of my favorite action manga, X by CLAMP, is a shoujo manga.

 

[7eve70rd]

Graphic Novels
are picture books with boobs in them.

 

[Goblin Slayer]

Well, you aren't wrong. technically, anything that has a story and drawn art is a comic.
You could argue that even versions of the Bible, the ones with the art, are technically comics/visual novels.

Except the FILTHY GOBLIN ART!!!... Oh... they want you to think it's art...
Oh nonono, it's Goblinated art... just like they GOBLINATE!!!! everything else...

Filthy little GOBLIN fingers... in paint, gobbling up paper and walls and... what, huh?
<shakes head> Bururururu

Anyhow, I really don't care if a visual novel is technically a comic. I enjoy reading them as well as comics, so it's no real deal breaker for me.

...goblins...

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

in Spain we use "tebeo" to refer to serialized juvenile comics, because our first comic magazine was names TBO. We also use (or at least used) "historieta".

Although both those terms are not as used today as just comic or novela gráfica

How were you naming the stuff like The Smurfs or Asterix?

Here I still use Comics to refer to American strips (clashing saturated colors) as opposed to BD, specially with distinctive old styles like "Ligne Claire".

I would still translate "BD" to "comics" in English, but IME people here will still use distinct words depending on the origin.

Also, I never felt there was a meme here about reading BD and being immature for that. Granted I grew up when that was all the rage, and supermarkets had entire alleys of that stuff on display. I think the trope of the fat nerd reading comics like the Simpsons guy is an American thing.

 

[Fray Guillermo]

How were you naming the stuff like The Smurfs or Asterix?

Tebeos

 

[Narisucks]

I actually studied comic books back when I was in game design and I even took classes in a school co-owned by someone who, at the time, was the artist doing Justice League of America.

The strict and boring answer of how graphic novels came to be was that they were supposed to be limited series (as in with a start and an end, and not keeping going forever) , separated from the main comic continuity if they used an existing active character (I'm looking at you, Killing Joke, who was never supposed to be part of the Batman canon but was so popular it became). And, the biggest difference is that they are supposed to come in "premium" format, with special binding (hard cover, etc).
Usually they were also the ones allowed to explore more adult and controversial themes that are not in the comics, but with time this line was crossed by some mainstream publications.

After that, there is also the library and publishing aspect as @Narisucks mentioned. It is good publicity/marketing to keep that.
Also keep in mind that in Europe, the graphic novels were slightly different. Some series like Corto Maltese and Asterix were published in graphic novel format as the adventures were basically , as the name would imply, "graphic books".

Oh yeah, to make it clear: I'm not disagreeing, I'm just giving a tl;dr of why it exists.

BD are an interesting case because you can find them in both comics and graphic novels depending on whether they're serialized isolated stories or telling a long continuous one. You'll often find Asterix, Tintin, and similar with the comic or even the newspaper reprint collections like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, though that could also be an age thing. Tintin can also pop up in the history section of the children's books (though not the *very* early stuff. If you know you know why)

The longer stuff like Enki Bilal's bibliography, Valerian, Metabarons, Incal, etc. often end up in the graphic novel section. The same goes for journal/autobiographic based comics like Persepolis and Epileptic (though those also sometimes get put in the history or art history sections depending on the library). Odds are that if your library has an art history section, you may find BDs there more often. Its probably American cultural views and bias but BDs seem to have more "respect" as pure "art", if that makes sense. (Maybe because of how we view the French lol)

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

BD are an interesting case because you can find them in both comics and graphic novels depending on whether they're serialized isolated stories or telling a long continuous one. You'll often find Asterix, Tintin, and similar with the comic or even the newspaper reprint collections like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, though that could also be an age thing. Tintin can also pop up in the history section of the children's books (though not the *very* early stuff. If you know you know why)

The longer stuff like Enki Bilal's bibliography, Valerian, Metabarons, Incal, etc. often end up in the graphic novel section. The same goes for journal/autobiographic based comics like Persepolis and Epileptic (though those also sometimes get put in the history or art history sections depending on the library). Odds are that if your library has an art history section, you may find BDs there more often. Its probably American cultural views and bias but BDs seem to have more "respect" as pure "art", if that makes sense. (Maybe because of how we view the French lol)

Do they deserve respect tho? They stole the concept to us as usual. Proof is half the names you cite are Belgians.

They still do good Camembert tho.

 

[shadowcat]

Who cares? Be happy people are reading at all.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I would still say that something like Maus being called a comic would be a bit disrespectful.

 

[Narisucks]

Do they deserve respect tho? They stole the concept to us as usual. Proof is half the names you cite are Belgians.

They still do good Camembert tho.

It depends on who you ask. I can only speak from the Western perspective. Most BDs are simply lumped together as "Franco-Belgian", "European" or just the general "Foreign but not Asian in origin comics".
It may also be a perception thing as sometimes BD art and Western comic art have some overlap when it comes to style. It's easy to look at something like Windsor Mccay's works and Herge's and think "Oh, this is probably the same country/era" at a first glance. I certainly thought that as a kid. There is still a chunk of the American population that don't know Tintin is Belgian or that its actual age. They think that its tech level and look are just a feature of the genre like Indiana Jones or The Rocketeer

Post automatically merged: May 21, 2025

I would still say that something like Maus being called a comic would be a bit disrespectful.

To be fair, Maus (or what would become Maus as a polished graphic novel collection) began as a serialized "underground comix" about Art Spiegelman coping with his mother's (then recent) suicide. I believe its brought up in the Maus graphic novel when Spiegelman's father uncovers his old work. I think you can still find the original serial in most printed underground comix collections or just on the Internet Archive. They've done a wonderful job of preserving a rarely seen piece of art history.

 

[popckorn]

Novels are just Short Stories.
There I said it.

 

[Graw]

I agree. I also believe anime is just another name for cartoons.