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From Doodles to Graphic Novels

A History of the Graphic Novel

By: Yvan Chaxel and David Romani

Posted: 11/19/01

In between cinema, literature, painting, tagging, rock n’ roll, tango, TV series and radio operas lies a somewhat ill-defined and under-recognized form of art: the graphic novel. With one picture every 24 seconds (if you have a normal reading speed) instead of 24 pictures per second, comic strips have evolved much more slowly than movies and film, and with limited space for text, they have been derided as children entertainment or pop culture. Yet things are changing, public awareness is growing and a new breed of talented artists is shaking the world of graphic novels. Also called sequential art, this enfant terrible has emerged from comic books in the late 70’s and seems now poised to become a full blown genre with a large audience.

The following is a brief account, a snapshot, of how the industry has evolved over 100 plus years and several countries.

A Little Bit of History

The first comics appeared in the late 1800s in newspapers. At that time, the newspaper industry was highly fragmented and most cities had as many as half a dozen newspapers. Comics were conceived as a marketing gimmick to draw more customers and compete against rival newspapers. They were visual, humorous and became a huge success. Cartoonists however considered themselves journalists and had no artistic pretension. They helped selling the newspaper and that was it.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the first publications of comics as an independent genre start to emerge, but they have a very limited audience. Things change when Hergé, whom many consider the spiritual father of comic books, start publishing his first Bande Dessinée (comic strip) in 1926 in Belgium. Four years later, he publishes the first of his Tintin series: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Tintin, the young and adventurous reporter, proves to be a success. In 1932, Hergé publishes Tintin in America where Tintin goes to Chicago to fight the crime and Al Capone. By the 1950s, Tintin has become immensely popular in the francophone world. The house of Casterman, Hergé’s long-time publisher, proceeds with translation in German, Spanish and English.

In the mean time Jean Dupuis, another Belgian, started in 1936 a weekly publication, Spirou, dedicated to comic strips. It quickly becomes an innovation lab for bande dessinée authors. In the 50’s and 60’s comic book writing becomes so huge in Belgium that production studios are started under the leadership of famous authors.

In 1974, a new type of weekly publication appears in France: “Metal Hurlant” (screaming metal) from the publishing House: “Les Humanoids Associés”. Catering to a mature audience, the stories are more complex and the art becomes very elaborate with computers being used to assist the design. In a sign that graphic novels have evolved from their juvenile background, Cold Equator, by Enki Bilal, receives the 1992 prize for the best literary novel (as opposed to just the best graphic novel).

Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, things are moving fast and lead to a new style. One defining feature of American comic books was the emergence of the superhero genre as a result of World War Two and the atomic race. In fact, comics in the US have traditionally been identified with the superhero, and this perhaps explains their poor reputation as cheap entertainment for the ignorant and downtrodden masses. Batman, Superman, Spiderman, the X-Men and all sorts of beings endowed with super-powers are no more than escapism from reality.

The other distinctive characteristic of comic books relies in its continuous production process. New issues have to be published every month. The titles and the characters belong to the publisher, whereas artists and writers are simply interchangeable salaried men. In contrast with Europe, there is little room for the artist / owner. The top comic book houses, Marvel and DC, grew to control over 80% of the market.

Each country, each artist seems to develop his or her own style. In Italy for instance Hugo Pratt (1927-1995) creates a hugely popular character named Corto Maltese. It appears for the first time as a peripheral character of the story “The ballad of the salt sea” (published in the Italian Magazine Sgt. Kirk, 1967-1969), but then becomes the main character of a series of books. Corto Maltese belongs to that category of larger than life characters that roams through the world in search of hidden treasures and adventures. Pratt’s particular knack though is to intertwine history with fiction. Hence, Corto finds himself searching for the lost war chest of Kublai Khan in the midst of revolutionary Russia in 1917. We find him again in Turkey and Armenia in 1922 looking for yet another treasure (that of Alexander of Macedonia this time) as he meets Enver Pacha, the Turk general. Name a conflict of the first half of the 20th century and you are almost certain that there is a Corto Maltese book about it. The charm of the whole saga, though, comes from the fine research that Hugo Pratt does each time and the romantic melancholy that exudes from the characters. History, folk, tradition, adventure and poetry (Corto even encounters the spirit of French poet Arthur Rimbaud in Ethiopia) are beautifully distilled in a dozen episodes.

Another example of comics responding to country and situation-specific factors is provided by the Spanish comic-book scene of the 1940s and 1950s. In a milieu of repressive censorship established by the Franco regime after the Spanish civil war, artists and publishers developed an entire sub-genre: the historical hero. El Capitán Trueno, El Cachorro, and El Guerrero del Antifaz are heroes of legend whose adventures run in now-forgotten times, fighting traditional enemies: Saracens and moors, pirates, invaders, bandits. With forms of political expression severely constrained, the stories hark for some golden time where justice, loyalty and goodness prevailed and provided a means to forget a drab economic post-war environment. The regime approved of these nostalgic themes and their perceived conformism, without ever realizing the veiled criticism thrown at the current rulers. As both society and government grew more open and tolerant in the 1960s and 1970s, this genre decayed in favor of satirical comics more engaged in everyday social mores.

Show Me the Money!

The structure of the industry varies from country to country and times to times but usually involves the same protagonists: story writers, graphic artists (this includes the illustrators and the colorists - the people who fill the drawings with color), publishers, distributors and retail shops owners. Then there are also all the peripheral activities and their actors such as licensing, marketing, film producers, etc.

At the beginning of things newspaper would hire cartoonists directly. As the competition between journals decreased, however, cartoonists organized themselves in syndicates that aggregated the comic strips and would then deal with the newspaper (increased supplier power basically). This organization seems to have worked well enough to survive to this day even though some authors moan about the rigidity of syndicates. In his Tenth Anniversary Book, Bill Watterson (the author of Calvin and Hobbes) comments about syndication, “[it] has encouraged the calculated production of strips to mirror trends and capitalize on the specific interests of desirable demographic groups. The comics have gained immense readerships and have become very profitable this way, but at some cost to the comics’ early exuberance.”

For regular comics such as the X-men, the role of the syndicates is assumed by the publishers. In the US for instance, Marvel comics and DC comics (DC comics is owned by AOL/Time Warner) own 80% of the market. Their position is so dominant in the super hero segment that they actually own the characters. Spiderman and Captain America belong to Marvel while Superman and Batman belong to DC. So when either of them wants to write a story about a super hero, they hire a crew of storywriters and artists for an issue, a season or more. This approach has allowed characters such a Superman to outlive its original author and keep going for over 50 years. On the flip side, people have argued that the stories lacked imagination and character and that artists feel constrained and cannot express themselves.

On the other end of the spectrum, some publishers, like the Humanoids group, have privileged a closer relationship with the artists. In that case, artists keep complete ownership of their stories and characters. Fabrice Giger, owner of the Humanoids, says, “I consider the humanoids Group as a laboratory. We invite artists and engineers to participate and create an emotion. This goal requires sensibility and perseverance.” It seems to be a successful recipe if one can judge from the roaster of impressive artists and awards: Bilal, Jodorowski, Moebius, Manara, Grand prix d’Angouleme (1992), Best novel (1992), Alph’Art title for the best comic strip of the year (1999), EMI award for 3D animation…

In the last ten years, the group has managed to change the graphic novel landscape by signing up talented artists and bringing cutting edge technology to the industry. In the 1990s the group made a series of strategic acquisitions around the graphic novel technology, including LBO, a digital studio, MediaPegs, a graphics software company, and Airtight, a partnership with film director Ridley Scott. Much of the credit for this mini revolution can be attributed to Swiss artist and entrepreneur Giger and his dedication to the group and the graphic novel genre. “Even if you don’t have a chance, you go ahead and take it” is reportedly his motto. To find more about the group we interviewed Dave Olbrich from The Humanoids Inc., in L.A. (see below the interview).

Further down in the value chain, after the publishers, come the wholesale distributors. In the US, Diamond Comics Inc., has built a quasi monopoly over its 20 years of existence with over 90% of the hobby bookshop markets. It is also the number one English language distributor in the world. It sells comic books and graphic novels to dedicated bookshops (called “hobby” to differentiate them from the retail chains and supermarkets). Unlike in Europe, however, comic distribution in the US is often non-refundable leaving individual bookshops to bear the brunt of commercial failures if they over estimated the demand for an album. While it has been argued that they are best placed to evaluate the demand of their local market, this shift of responsibility to the “little guy” is also quoted as the number one reason for the relative “novelty aversion” of the American market. In fact, a comic book retailer explicitly told me once that he wouldn’t mind ordering new and original titles but that the risk was simply too large for him to bear. Well, there’s no free lunch as we are taught in competitive strategy, but one wonders if the non refundable policy might not change as new publishing houses trying to grow their market share start assuming the demand risk.

Further down still we find all the merchandizing activity that builds on the popularity of characters. Hello Kitty merchandize would be one typical example. But increasingly the authors themselves and the publishing houses have moved into new territories such as selling the rights to produce films based in their work. And the merchandize has also moved to high premium products (Bilal recently provided the design for Swiss watch Hyperion by De la Roche). Some hard core artists despise this drift of the industry, however. Bill Waterson is probably the most vocal about that “shameless commercialism,” “Licensing usually cheapens the original creation. Nothing dulls the edge of a new and clever cartoon like saturating the market with it.”

On the financial side, most of the publishing houses are either wholly owned by larger media groups or privately owned. Recently, however, some interesting deals have occurred where VC firms have backed start up companies such as Constellation Ventures (owned by Bear Stearns) financing Airtight, the joint venture between Ridley Scott and the Humanoids.

At the end of the day, the market for graphic novel remains quite small. In 2000, the US “hobby” market accounted for slightly more than $300 million (to compare with around $10 billion for the movie industry). But this figure doesn’t take into account the mass market, which is far more difficult to gauge. And it doesn’t account for the European market either. It is hard to predict what form the medium might take in the future. There are talks of “fusion” and “digital convergence” whereby graphic novels and digital technologies would happily marry and offer the fans an animated graphic novel. We remain skeptical. It sounds very much like a cartoon. Cartoons have been around for quite a long time and haven’t dethroned the graphic novels yet. If anything, it’s actually the opposite. We think the main reason is that the art of graphic novels has moved closer to painting. Take the “Books of Magic series, for instance. Some of the panels take a long time to absorb and digest. There are too beautiful to only get a glimpse of… Twenty-four images per second or twenty-four seconds per image: that’s the trade off! It would cost a fortune to create an animated novel of the quality of the static ones, and it would be squandered. The technology is here to stay for the better: fine tuning the quality, lowering production costs, allowing for larger formats maybe, but we think that graphic novels have an identity of their own and will remain a medium of choice for graphic artists.

The Pros Talk

Last Tuesday we interviewed by phone Dave Olbrich Publishing Director of Humanoids Inc.

ChiBus: Dave, the Humanoids opened their US office in 1998. Could you explain what prompted this move?

Dave Olbrich: In 1998, the Humanoids recognized that the English language market and the US market in particular offered some opportunity for a more elaborate type of comic books. In 1999, Humanoids Publishing was created to publish its collection in the US market.

Chibus: Would you say that the Humanoids’s intent is to translate its collection for the US market, or to seek new talents and bring them to market in the English language environment.

D.O.: Both. Of course it’s been easier and faster to translate our existing catalogue. The Incal series is now available, and so is the Nikopol trilogy, among other things. We have been trying to select new talents as well and to foster collaborations between artists. We had informal talks with Neil Gaiman, the author of the Sandman. But these things take a lot more time and we are incredibly focused on the quality of the products.

Chibus: How does it work exactly, do you commission artists to produce a graphic novel or do you have them come to you with ideas that you then fund.

D.O.: Again, it’s a bit of both, but mainly the latter. We believe strongly that artists should own their story and characters. They tend to produce far better stories when they are emotionally involved with their art. We can’t produce everything either. We must be very selective as we compete with other publishing houses for shelf space in the bookstores.

Chibus: So what sort of strategy have you followed so far to break into the US market?

D.O.: There is a lot of grass root work to be done. We participate in the most active web sites, we send out catalogues and we have tried to cultivate the mass-market distributors. We have also formed alliances or bought companies in the graphic design sphere such as Sparx, Yeti Entertainment, and West End Games (for role playing games). The animation market also represents an exciting opportunity to monetize the brand equity of some of these novels. We are considering making a animated story version for the Incal.

Chibus: So how successful have you been so far?

D.O.: We sold over 175,000 English books in little more than 2 years and the figure is growing. We also received an EMI award for the 3D animation of “Rolie Polie Olie.” The end of the Internet bubble has affected us of course but we are here for the long run.