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The goal of the graphic novelist is to take the form of the comic book, which has become an embarrassment, and raise it to a more ambitious and meaningful level.
—Eddie Campbell

Graphic Novels

Graphic novels take comics into new territory, using the flexibility and iconography of the form to create new ways of illustrating the human experience.

Japanese manga, while informed by American comics, have in turn influenced graphic novels in the West, both stylistically and in content.

Groundbreaking works such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, which tells the story of his parents’ experience of the Holocaust, helped the contemporary graphic novel to cross over from subculture to mainstream. Sean Tan's The Arrival, comprising hundreds of drawings and no text, also pushes the genre into new realms.

Producing works that run the gamut of artistic style, subject matter and length, graphic novelists refuse to limit themselves to easily-defined categories.