Why I Love Graphic Novels

Why I Love Graphic Novels

I’ve loved comics for as long as I can remember, and I have no recollection of learning to read, so it must have been quite early in my life.  The Beano & Dandy, Whizzer & Chips, etc, soon gave way to the new Marvel series of British imprints, reproducing the US comic adventures of The Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four, Spiderman, etc.

I had many of them from the first issue, but as the Marvel & DC universes grew, I found it impossible to keep up with the pace at which the comics were produced. I simply couldn’t afford every issue, and it became frustrating when an adventure started in Spiderman, was concluded in an issue of Daredevil or one of the other comics, which I often had no access to. Stand-alone stories became rare, so I often found I was getting the middle section of a complex story arc feature.

Storing the comics was getting difficult too. I was piling them up in cupboards, under my bed, and even in my wardrobe. Many valuable editions got ragged and torn, so valuable collectors editions became virtually worthless to any collectors out there. Worse, the stories endlessly crossing over were disenchanting me. With each hero story being stand alone, the heroes could seem unique, but once Spiderman met the Fantastic Four and the big ensemble adventure groups like The Avengers, X-Men & Justice League Of America came into being, the population seemed to consist mostly of heroes. Stories would often be bogged down by their in fighting, and whole stories would just be a punch up stretched over twenty panels. I was growing disillusioned and tired of the sprawling tired franchise.

I found it odd that Superman, virtually a God, needed a team, especially with mortals like Batman, on board.

I still looked in once in a while, if comics were left around or made available, and the 2000 AD Judge Dredd series breathed fresh air into the genres. 

With the development of interest in graphic novels, complete stories were again in print, though some seem to be little more than randomly gathered sets of independent adventures of some heroes. It was often the non-science fiction graphics that appealed to me, Spiegleman’s Maus, Satrapi’s Persepolis, Harvey Pekar’s work, etc, but my passion for comic book art and story has been rediscovered.

Arthur Chappell