GRAPHIC NOVELS: SOPHISTICATED COMICS
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 The world is constantly changing, no surprise there. Few things remain constant. Everything, politics, business, banking, technology, even sex and marriage, are no longer that which they once were, those concepts that we tenuously cling to as “truths to be self-evident … [and our] unalienable rights”. Works of fiction, please note the avoidance of the word “novel”, are not immune. Today there’s a new kid on the block, “The Graphic Novel.”
In the Darwinian scheme of things man first communicated with grunts and sounds which evolved into words. The words of rudimentary ideas were depicted by pictures etched on cavern walls, the first recorded form of communication, followed by picture alphabets, then real alphabets and then books. In the history of the written word, pictures, non verbal images, from hieroglyphics to illustrated medieval manuscripts [“Belle Heures”, commissioned by the Duc de Berry, circa 1408/9] to glossy coffee table books [“Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001] coexisted and supported ideas expressed by mere letters. They certainly added another dimension.
