Graphic Novel

A graphic novel is a self-contained, book-length work of sequential art, encompassing fiction, nonfiction and anthologized comics material, though comics scholars and industry professionals dispute how broadly the term should be applied. In the United States it is generally distinguished from an ordinary comic book, a periodical or trade paperback, and some critics describe it simply as a marketing term for a bound collection of comics. Fan historian Richard Kyle coined the term in November 1964 in the fanzine Capa-Alpha. It gained wider currency after Will Eisner's A Contract with God in 1978 and the Marvel Graphic Novel line in 1982, and became familiar to the general public in the late 1980s through Art Spiegelman's Maus, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen; the Book Industry Study Group adopted graphic novel as a bookstore category in 2001.