The Art Of Story Telling (Essay)

The History Of Graphic Novels

During this essay I will be discussing the history of graphic novels and the different stylesof them. I will also be looking at, and comparing different graphic novel artists and illustrators work. As well as these things I am also going to look at the structure of telling a story within graphic novels and out. The reason behind looking into graphic novels for this essay is because I have always loved reading stories and telling them, for as long as I can remember. During this year I have been creating artwork related to my characters and stories, and now I think that it will be a great idea to look in to how I can take my artwork further and make the illustrations tell a story. The best way to do this is by creating a graphic novel.

A graphic novel is a book containing artwork that tells a story. The book could be a novel withillustrations or it can be mainly drawings and illustrations with a little amount of text to show speech and thoughts of the characters.This means you have to rely on the imagery to tell the story. Thereare many different styles of graphic novels, the most popular onebeing comics. The main companies that create comics are marvel and DC comics. There are also a variety of different ones from countries across the globe the main one is Japanese manga, which is vastly becoming popular around the world. Even though you see big graphic novel publishers there is also small independent authors and artist opting to take the route of self publishing, which now means that more and more graphic novels are being published every single day.

The earliest examples of graphic novels date back to prehistoric times when people told stories by pictures instead of by text. These earlier examples can be found on cave walls rather than on paper.From the prehistoric times to the ancient Egyptians graphic storytelling have been used to communicate thoughts and ideas. During earlier times it was considered a luxury to be able to read a book soimages and cartoons where used to communicate ideas to working classpeople who couldn't afford these types of luxuries.

Another example of images that tell a story is stain glass windows in churches. These pictures tell and show stories from the bible, mostlythe ones about Jesus. The majority of stain glass windows use colours such as red, blue, yellow and purple.

The first major graphic novels were published in America in 1842. Years later more comic strips where being picked up by publishers to make 'albums' of these comics. These series where published between 1915 and the 1930s. Publishers began to look for more genres which is why they began to look at comic strips to print.

In 1938 the first volume of Action Comics was introduced and this is when the first Supermanwas introduced. These Superman comics brought forth new types ofcomic books such as costumed heroes, detectives and cowboys. Comicbooks then started selling millions of copies to both children and adults.

In the mid 1950's the comic scene started to change dramatically when the public began fearing that horror and crime comics were being aimed at children.However ever in many other countries such as Japan comics were marked with different levels for different age groups. In Japan manga comics appeared first as single issues and then they started to become more of novel type books. Manga is known for being published in many different genres and to a wide range of different audiences. Later manga would become one of the biggest selling types of comic in various countries across the world. It started to get very big inAmerica in the 1990's. The concept of the novel type comic book also became popular in other countries such as France and Germany.

In the 1970's and early 80's comic book publishers started selling to the direct market by stores that just sold comic books and related merchandise. This meant that they could start publishing in new genres and at different audience. As this began to happen creators began to demand more right over their characters and content. This resulted in them demanding more control over their creations, as well as wanting a share of themoney from the sales. As a result of this some artist started to self-publish their comics.

Today graphic novels have become a big part of comic book publishing. Along with the growing sales of Manga in America and many other countries more traditional book stores and libraries are carrying a wide range of graphic novels.