Graphic Novels, which is what I would call a Trade Paperback, are what you would buy at, say, a Barnes & Noble if you weren't looking in the magazines. They are paperback books of multiple issues of a comic book put together for sale. These are what i buy for our local library. They also sell, after an entire series has run, Omnibuses. An Omnibus is the ENTIRE series in one big book, and usually in hardcover. its like if you took those TPBs and bound THOSE together in an even bigger book. They're pretty expensive, but if you love that particular series, they are the best way to hold on to them. So in order from smallest to biggest: single issue "comic" < Trade Paperback < Omnibus.
Now that you have an overview of classification, I want to outline why exactly that matters. Comics are viewed as a lesser form of reading as I said before. Yes, reading an issue id going to take you all of about 10 minutes at best, but when you're reading issue after issue, it adds up. Trade Paperbacks are then like a regular book if you will. They carry plenty of text and hold onto part of the whole story or a particular series. A TBP to me is like one book of Harry Potter. With that in mind, what in the world does a Omnibus correlate to?? It would be like taking all the Harry Potters, 1-7, and releasing them as one book, with a tremendous amount of story and an overwhelming amount to take in and read. That description alone would justify Graphic Novels as a genre, but size doesn't matter, Content, Context, Canon and Continuation are what matter.
Graphic Novels carry a story in a different way than a regular novel would. The addition of visuals on every page, all the time, adds nuance and depth that some authors cant evoke out of text. There are something things that should be kept subtle, or almost hidden but not out of sight, and it may be difficult to add those into a novel without giving them away. In any case, Graphic Novels can tell a story in a different, eye-catching way. There may be instance when you could go pages without running into a word, or have fewer than 10 to a page and you may evoke much more drama, feeling, or story than you could in a chapter of a New York Times Bestselling Author. That, my friends, is the happy marriage of Context and Content that fuels the basic needs and necessities of most Graphic Novels.
Now on Canon and Continuation: Canon is defined as a fundamental principle or general rule. If you have ever heard anyone complain about a new graphic novel based off an old one or something similar, one thing they may be complaining about is this. We love our heroes/villains/etc. the way they are, we're accustomed to it. When a new writer takes over and needs a fresh new story about the same characters, they tend to mess with our laws of the universe which can be scary. It would be like if Batman's parents were still alive, Krypton wasn't blown up, or Spider-Man had his own Spider-Hummer. Why would Spider-Man need a Hummer? There is a certain strength that these characters have built up over their comic runs, and to change that is to start all over, in some cases literally. Continuation is important to any story. If you have a certain series run hundreds of issues, but along the way there was a change in writer or illustrator or something, you might see that series change a bit. But to change large amounts of information and character traits is something really absurd. Some characters may not even have anything change between different runs; I'm a huge Punisher fan, and he could run through a series fighting crime lords, his next series cleaning up the inner-city slums, then fight off a league or monster-killing hunters and never have a trait change. He is Frank Castle through and through. Continuation is that safety and familiarity you get when your Canon stays Canon.
And allllll this I just wrote was just applying to super-hero comics and the like. There is a simple beauty to contemporary Graphic Novels. Contemporary ones are based closer to real life events; they don't feature super heroes 90% of the time, can show off life events in a clarity regular novels take so long to show. Life lessons can be learned from these or heartstrings can be pulled. I've made sure to stock a decent collection of these in our library and they tend to be just as interesting as the fictional Graphic Novels. If you get a moment, check out our Graphic Novels in out Teen section to see some of the titles I've collected. I can always give a good recommendation.
And as always, if anyone has any recommendations or requests for me to look into for our library, I'm always open to suggestions. My e-mail can be found on my profile at the bottom of this post.
Left: Decent story, good morals, humor, and multiple outlooks on life; Koko Be Good is a good start for anyone.
Right: Runaway is a Marvel comic about a group of L.A teens who find out their parents run an evil organization. Teenage rebellion takes over as the use their inherited greatness to stop their criminal parents.
There's also a lot of great web comics out there that meet alot of the criteria I listed here. If you don't mind a little illegal materials in your reading, check out Octopus Pie!
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