Semantics

I know it is fashionable to make fun of political correctness, but I tend to err on its side, because I really don’t want to make anyone feel bad or disrespected, and I totally understand the power of language.

That being said, it is interesting how often the term that appears to be the correct one is one that is not used within the group. Therefore, during my Black History month reading I think I am reading about African Americans, but then I read about people who are of African descent, or residence, with no American to them, and the books keep saying black, and my friends who are black call themselves black, not African-American, and I start to wonder what the point is.

And during my Native American Heritage month reading, the books keep saying Indian, and in an essay I read in college Russell Means says that it is not even that Columbus thought that he was in India, but that he had encountered these people In Dios (with God), and basically what has happened in both of those cases that no matter which term I use, I feel gauche.

So, when I started reading graphic novels, I thought that’s what you were supposed to call them, as a sign of respect, because there was serious artwork and effort put into them and there were serious themes, and people were not taking them seriously. This also appears to be wrong.

I guess I first started wondering because Big Bang Theory never uses the term graphic novel, and they are at the comic book shop a lot. I thought, well, they do seem to be sticking to the serial superhero genre though, so maybe those are still comic books, but if you have something that is one-off, or where no one wears capes, or I don’t know. That’s when I turned to Wikipedia.

I found some interesting quotes:

Alan Moore: "It's a marketing term... that I never had any sympathy with. The term 'comic' does just as well for me... The problem is that 'graphic novel' just came to mean 'expensive comic book' and so what you'd get is people like DC Comics or Marvel Comics—because 'graphic novels' were getting some attention, they'd stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover and call it The She-Hulk Graphic Novel.”

Daniel Raeburn: “"I snicker at the neologism first for its insecure pretension — the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a 'sanitation engineer' — and second because a 'graphic novel' is in fact the very thing it is ashamed to admit: a comic book, rather than a comic pamphlet or comic magazine."

Neal Gaiman: (on someone saying that he wrote graphic novels, not comic books) “meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening."

There are some differences that you could use. For example, you could call the monthly issues comic magazines, and then call them a book when bound. You could draw a line between those that are comic and those that aren’t, or you could call it a novel when it is one defined story arc (whether episodic or not) rather than a continuous series. However, the term seems to be unnecessary. Some of the biggest names in comic books are fine with the term “comic book”, so I guess I am too.

The fact that if you walk into a comic book shop and pick up that month’s issue of Adventures in Darkness, that it is neither comic nor a book, appears to be irrelevant, along with international terms. For example, “manga” apparently means random pictures. I put to you that those pictures do not tend to be random.

So, since April I have been reading many comic books, and writing one too.