tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post8412044605275514845..comments2024-02-19T23:42:15.797-05:00Comments on Dr. K's 100-Page Super Spectacular: Will Eisner and the "Graphic Novel"Dr. Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792907846193017204noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-67394049599500409272024-02-19T23:38:50.012-05:002024-02-19T23:38:50.012-05:00Who are some of the individuals credited with usin...Who are some of the individuals credited with using the term "graphic novel" before Eisner? <a href="https://bcomms.telkomuniversity.ac.id/prodi-ilmu-komunikasi-universitas-telkom-selenggarakan-sharing-alumni-bertema-express-your-story-through-the-lens/" rel="nofollow">Telkom University</a>PTS No 1https://bcomms.telkomuniversity.ac.id/prodi-ilmu-komunikasi-universitas-telkom-selenggarakan-sharing-alumni-bertema-express-your-story-through-the-lens/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-90919350140536946622019-05-04T23:48:50.145-04:002019-05-04T23:48:50.145-04:00I am 29 years old and I was diagnosis of Breast ca...I am 29 years old and I was diagnosis of Breast cancer, easy well and have a similar story except my first acceptance as a Herbal medicine denials. I wasn’t into the movement Perseid and didn’t establish connections with any of them really, just had faith in believing how they work. I say this because it was during using Dr Itua herbal medicine i now then testify herbal medicine is real, Dr Itua herbal medicine cure my breast cancer I was suffering from for 2 years. Dr Itua herbal medicine is made of natural herbs which has no side effect and is easy to drink as well. Contact Dr Itua herbal Center if you are suffering from the same Breast Cancer or any kind of human Diseases including....HIV/AIDS, HERPES COLORECTAL CANCER, BLADDER CANCER, PROSTATE CANCER, KIDNEY CANCER, LUNG CANCER, SKIN CANCER, UTERINE CANCER, LEUKEMIA, VIRUS, HEPATITIS, WOMEN/MEN INFERTILITY, LOVE SPELL,LOTTERY SPELL. HIS CONTACT EMAIL/WHATSAPP: drituaherbalcenter@gmail.com/+2348149277967<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-87497888189076874172011-08-16T09:12:44.379-04:002011-08-16T09:12:44.379-04:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Rudra455https://www.blogger.com/profile/04101147697338127426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-63674391757504993742010-12-31T17:47:30.178-05:002010-12-31T17:47:30.178-05:00I seem to recall that the CAPA-alpha collection at...I seem to recall that the CAPA-alpha collection at MSU was originally one of the McGheehan brothers copies. (each brother had one set), although my memory could be wrong. Certainly saying 50 copes only is off, as many of the folks in the early days actually printed off a lot more copies than just for the membership (and wan't 60 the copy count back in 1964?). I also see a suggestion that Kyle's Fantasy Illustrated , Graphic Story Magazine and Graphic Story World were obscure fanzines - they're only as obscure as any fanzine from the period would be. it's hard for me to imagine anyone in fandom in those years who hadn't heard of them. Even if all they saw was the ads in RBCC.<br /><br />Steven RoweSangorShophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17650888644317638942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-5299289901151404672010-12-08T19:17:19.263-05:002010-12-08T19:17:19.263-05:00Eddie, thanks for adding that information. As this...Eddie, thanks for adding that information. As this post has gotten a lot of attention for both it's content and the quality of the discussion in the comments, I welcome these additions. And in case anyone is interested, the special collection library at Michigan State University has a near-complete run of Capa-Alpha, including the rare early issues that feature Kyle's seminal work. I was there a few months ago, and I was amazed that they had this valuable resource.Dr. Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08792907846193017204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-73296256678853715132010-12-08T18:07:04.041-05:002010-12-08T18:07:04.041-05:00Jim,
in answer to your question.
(Again, I realize...Jim,<br />in answer to your question.<br />(Again, I realize this is off topic from Dr K's post, but it can be useful to have all the references in one place for anybody who wants to cut and paste it for storage.)<br />I don't have it but this appears to be the accepted historical record:<br /><br />"While Richard Kyle initially coined the terms "graphic story" and "graphic novel" in Capa-Alpha #2 (November, 1964), Capa-Alpha was only available to members of the APA and was extremely limited in circulation (less than 50 copies). Thus, Richard Kyle's Graphic Story Review column is the 1st public coining and explanation of the terms to general comicdom..."Eddie Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02492020671613766729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-78417399557037941792010-12-08T01:30:41.508-05:002010-12-08T01:30:41.508-05:00Hi, Eddie,
Alas, I own just about every issue of F...Hi, Eddie,<br />Alas, I own just about every issue of <b>Fantasy Illustrated</b> EXCEPT #5. Kyle doesn't mention the term in his inaugural column in issue #4.<br /><br />Dr. K: I missed the 1964 reference in the post. Sorry. Where did Kyle's first usage appear?<br /><br />Part of what I learned and meant to convey with my second post was that Kyle wrote an extensive (and not altogether flattering) review of the new Eisner material in the Harvey <b>SPIRIT</b> #1. I think it's pretty unlikely that Eisner would NOT have seen or been shown that review column, especially since it contained a negative review of his current work (and, yes I realize that there are way too many negatives in that sentence). If he <b><i>had</i></b> seen it, then he <b><i>had</i></b> been introduced to the term "graphic novel" in 1966. <br /><br />As for the "first" graphic novels, I believe that it's been pretty much established, but possibly since lost to fannish history, that folks like Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Otto Nückel, and Milt Gross can easily lay claims to them as early as 1928 - although there are several books on the market today discussing and reprinting them.<br /><br />Peace, Jim (|:{>Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.http://www.bpib.com/images.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-35775724208356653922010-12-07T08:49:53.875-05:002010-12-07T08:49:53.875-05:00Jim, thanks for those very specific references. As...Jim, thanks for those very specific references. As I state in my post, Richard Kyle's use of the term can be traced back to 1964. Just to clarify, as Eddie Campbell points out, my goal was not to establish who came up with the term first--I say that that has been well established--but to show this new evidence of how the term made its way to Eisner. There is still the likelihood that Eisner read it in Kyle's Graphic Story Review also, but the Katz correspondence is a concrete piece of evidence that Eisner was exposed to the term before 1978, when he claimed to have come up with the term on its own.<br /><br />As I discuss in my post, Eisner's story that he came up with the term suddenly, in a fit of inspiration while trying to convince Bantam to publish his new book, has been accepted as fact, and all the biographical data on Eisner repeats it. Eisner is even a little dismissive about past uses of the term in the quote I provide, saying that "some other guy" came up with it first, but in a different context than his. That different context is probably something like the "idea of literariness" that Eddie mentions. My post was meant to bring in this new information that enhances Eisner's anecdote, but I am by no means trying to prove something that already has been proved.<br /><br />However, I do think that the way Journalista and Bleeding Cool linked to this post, they make it look like I'm trying to prove that Eisner didn't come up with the term first. What I'm doing is much less dramatic, but those two links seem to show that the myth that Eisner created the graphic novel still persists.Dr. Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08792907846193017204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-61005535839303803772010-12-07T00:07:00.991-05:002010-12-07T00:07:00.991-05:00Hi, Jim, good to hear from you.
I realise this i...Hi, Jim, good to hear from you. <br /><br />I realise this is beside the original point, but this info has long disappeared off the net, so I'll drop it here.<br /><br />Our pal Bob Beerbohm awhile back (2004) on the TCJ forum wrote a long post tracing stuff like this. he didn't mention the one you stated above, but he did go back earlier (or, it DID appear earlier still):<br />1) Fantasy Illustrated #5 Spring 1966, letter from one Henry Steele: "I'm Impressed by the suggestion that very long graphic stories would better exploit the artistic possibilities of the medium. Do you envisage the publication of hardcover "graphic novels" of several hundred pages, not on a periodical basis, but as individual publishing ventures like conventional novels?"<br />Bob believed that to be the earliest ever usage of the term. As you say, it was more or less inferred in Kyle's column in the issue before this one<br />I also filed this from Graphic Story Magazine, spring 1969, interview with Alex Toth:" Interviewer: Someday graphic novels will take up where comic books are leaving off, but what about the artist who has to sit down and draw them?"<br />by that time it appears to have become a regular conversational topic.<br /><br />To bring things back: the original point of Dr K's post, if I may take the liberty of phrasing it for him, was "When did this ongoing conversation in an obscure fanzine filter through to Will Eisner's consciousness?" It had certainly been around long enough.Eddie Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02492020671613766729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-46076090587956341432010-12-06T22:59:59.016-05:002010-12-06T22:59:59.016-05:00In Fantasy Illustrated #6. Richard Kyle's Grap...In Fantasy Illustrated #6. Richard Kyle's Graphic Story Review column, after a lengthy review of Eisner's Harvey Spirit #1, contains the following:<br /><br />"IF THE TALES of the Spirit represent an almost complete development of the graphic short story, the new Gold Key adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan novels represent the first steps in the creation of the graphic novel. With the August issue of <b>Tarzan of the Apes</b> magazine, a three part graphic story version of the book <b>Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar</b> was begun, drawn by Russ Manning and scripted by Gaylord Dubois. Completed, it will be 72 pages -- longer, probably, than any previous graphic novel."<br /><br />Even the name of Kyle's column, Graphic Story Review, contains the inference of the Graphic Novel within it. The column began in FI #4, Summer, 1965.<br /><br />Peace, Jim (|:{>Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.http://www.bpib.com/images.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-30462001457194876612010-12-06T22:43:58.697-05:002010-12-06T22:43:58.697-05:00I quote from the letters column of Bill Spicer'...I quote from the letters column of Bill Spicer's Fantasy Illustrated #7 dated Spring 1967: "I don't see why the concept of 'graphic novel' should necessarily imply immense amounts of pages." Letter from Harry Warner, Jr. <br /><br />From this casual usage, and the very idea of trying to define it, comes the impression that the term has appeared earlier still.<br /><br />Peace, Jim (|:{>Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.http://www.bpib.com/images.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-63726577828448303332010-12-06T19:22:28.639-05:002010-12-06T19:22:28.639-05:00another ps. I think I got touchy about this, which...another ps. I think I got touchy about this, which as you say is just a 'semantic distinction' after i was taken to task in a review for skimming over it in my Fate of the Artist, thinking oh what the hell it's not really important anyway, and who wants to know fifteen years of the backstory of a terminological phrase out of dusty old fanzines, I'll just give the credit to Eisner and get on with the story. later I got to thinking that just about everything has an underground history before it cracks the surface and often that turns out to be the interesting part, which I'm not saying is the case here however. Nevertheless I might have done that differently if I were to do the book over again.Eddie Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02492020671613766729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-12097956985209620722010-12-06T19:04:48.899-05:002010-12-06T19:04:48.899-05:00Dr K, yes you're right, they don't specifi...Dr K, yes you're right, they don't specifically use the term in the interview, though they are clearly discussing the concept. I jumped in too quickly. But I think the value of it is that it shows that Eisner had seen Graphic Story magazine, and the discussion was framed by that. And of course, Graphic Story is where the term originated. Thus it can't be claimed for Eisner that he arrived at it independently, which is really what we are trying to prove or disprove here. Your own discovery is the clincher.<br />well done.Eddie Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02492020671613766729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-90242784733148495042010-12-06T18:24:39.245-05:002010-12-06T18:24:39.245-05:00Eddie, thanks for that reference, and I'm hono...Eddie, thanks for that reference, and I'm honored you stopped by the blog. I had a chance to read Benson's typescript draft of that interview, which originally appeared in Witzend 6 (1968), while going through the Eisner papers. And while they definitely do talk about the concept of a book-length comic story, they don't actually use the term "graphic novel." They do, however, come really close, with phrases like "novel in comics form." <br /><br />So, it may only be a semantic distinction, but we're talking about two different things here: the term "graphic novel" and the concept of such a thing. While what I was concerned about in the post was expanding the story of how Eisner arrived at the term, it is definitely also interesting to see how he was motivated to create a book-length comics story. And I think you're right that the "idea of literariness" was a strong motivating factor--that these other books were not moving the medium forward into the realm of the literary. That attitude can also be seen in Eisner's responses to the underground comix movement, where he had enormous enthusiasm for the potential of it, but often came down hard on the actual content of the books being produced.<br /><br />And I share similar feelings about The First Kingdom as well.Dr. Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08792907846193017204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-67740461170984428032010-12-06T18:22:50.500-05:002010-12-06T18:22:50.500-05:00pps Dr K, I didn't mean to imply that your dis...pps Dr K, I didn't mean to imply that your discovery wasn't useful. All in all, if you add up all these incidents, Eisner was well aware of the development of the idea over a number of years and we can show specific points where it is referred to. There was an undercurrent in comics circles since the mid-sixties and while he did not mentally reside in those circles, he did visit from time to time.<br /><br />Ref: John Benson, "An Interview with Will Eisner," Witzend #6, 1968.<br /><br />best<br />EddieEddie Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02492020671613766729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-53667388557011099732010-12-06T16:10:52.686-05:002010-12-06T16:10:52.686-05:00Somewhere else I drew attention to John Benson'...Somewhere else I drew attention to John Benson's 1969 interview with Eisner, which originally appeared in either Graphic Story Magazine or Witzend, I can't recall without digging it all out, toward the end of which Benson discusses the 'graphic novel' concept with Eisner and whether Eisner would return to the field to attempt such a thing. They also looked at Kane's Savage in relation to the concept. Eisner was critical of Kane's book because, if you read between the lines, it lacked literary ambition, and also, more explicitly, it betrayed the integrity of the concept of comics as Eisner understood it. Elsewhere too I have opined that Eisner's idea of literariness was crucial to his thinking, which is probably why he dismissed all the other attempts to create a 'graphic novel'. This all showed categorically that Eisner was aware of Kyle, Graphic Story Magazine, and the concept of 'graphic novel' as entertained therein, nine years ahead of A Contract With God, and five years ahead of the exchange with Katz you refer to above. the interview was reprinted in the Comics Journal's big Eisner obituary issue in 2005.<br /><br />ps. Not relevant, but I can't look at First Kingdom without feeling nauseous.Eddie Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02492020671613766729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-27848249194815203132010-12-05T21:54:41.833-05:002010-12-05T21:54:41.833-05:00Good post, always enjoy throwing light on the side...Good post, always enjoy throwing light on the side alleys of comics history. I for one, never believed that Eisner came up with the term on his own, and suspected that Katz might have done so at some point before. Really, It's a fairly obvious term and who used or popularized it first is an academic sidenote at best. <br />Has there been a decent collection of the entire First kingdom? There really should be.Tom Stewarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07973524653928791807noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-45400880864221743332010-12-05T18:24:00.515-05:002010-12-05T18:24:00.515-05:00It was great to read this account, after following...It was great to read this account, after following the vociferous discussion which your inquiry about Eisner engendered over on the comixscholars list.Henebryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02205242801216185129noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-77230605375711106712010-12-05T17:53:26.198-05:002010-12-05T17:53:26.198-05:00Allen,
As I mention in the post, it's been we...Allen,<br /><br />As I mention in the post, it's been well established that Eisner was neither the first to use the term, nor the first to create a work that could be called a "graphic novel." What was the first depends on a lot of things, too many to get to here, but I tried to show, at least, that there were works that preceded Eisner that either used the term or otherwise fit the definition. What I'm more concerned about in this post is how Eisner himself arrived at the term, as he claimed that it came to him independently. I think the term "discredit" is probably overly harsh for what I discuss here.Dr. Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08792907846193017204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-434879494642797092.post-92007180980365643372010-12-05T17:34:13.155-05:002010-12-05T17:34:13.155-05:00Interesting and enlightening stuff. I was just one...Interesting and enlightening stuff. I was just one of the herd that thought that Eisner coined the term. So is "A Contract with God" considered to be the very first graphic novel then? I know that you said it's more of a collection of short stories but does this information discredit Eisner in that capacity?Allen Mauldinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07430144777763617180noreply@blogger.com