A LIFE FORCE
Will Eisner
Princeton, Wisconsin: Kitchen Sink Press, 1988
140 pp., $10.95
THE SHADOW 1941
Denny O' Neil, Michael W. Kaluta, and Russ Health
New York: Marvel Comics, 1988
64 pp., $12.95
The modern comic book is a few years older than Superman, who recently celebrated his fiftieth anniversary in the business. Although some critics and reviewers are still fond of referring to movies and books that don't please them as being as simpleminded as comic books, the lowly comic book has been, gradually, working its way out of the intellectual slums in recent years. Both those purveying traditional slambang superhero fare and those using comic-book techniques to tell different sorts of stories are getting attention beyond the usual circles of fans. Like many escapes from the ghetto, this one has been helped in part by a change of name. These higher-minded, higher-priced funny books are now labeled graphic novels. The upgraded format was borrowed from Europe, where this sort of thing has been going on for decades.
One of the pioneers was Belgian cartoonist Herge, whose first Tintin novel appeared in Europe in 1930. According to comics historian Richard Marschall, "Adults followed the series as avidly as did children, and were not embarrassed to be seen reading them." The books were full-length stories with subplots and twists. The Graphic Novel was established and publishers soon presented the work of many imitators and admirers of Herge. The sophistication of expression liberated the European comic strip from its juvenile associations. Thematic preoccupations were to be as varied as the brilliant colors of the graphic novels: kids' adventures; adult mysteries; science fiction; social satire; adaptions of classics; even the gamut from religious tales to pornographic stories.
The Tintin books have sold millions of copies, as have those featuring such latter-day successes as Asterix, Lucky Luke, and the Schtroumpfs (known in this country as the Smurfs). Graphic novels in Europe offering straight adventure fare have also done well, particularly Jean Giraud's Lt. Blueberry series, Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese tales, and Edgar Jacobs' Blake and Mortimer stories. For the past several years many of these European graphic novels, both in original foreign languages and in English translations, have been on sale in comics shops around the United States.
This exposure has helped bring the graphic novel format to the attention of large American comics publishers, such as Marvel and DC, as well as to small houses like Kitchen Sink Press and WaRP Graphics. The growth of these comics shops, following the decline of the newsstands, has provided a vital outlet for traditional format comic books as well as for the increasing number of graphic novels now being published in America. At the moment there are several thousand such specialty shops in operation.
A major concern in comic books has always been to get the proper blend of words and pictures. Not an easy task, as we'll discuss while going through the batch of graphic novels under consideration. Keep in mind,
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