BW Media Spotlight

As I grew up with comics there were numerous ways to get your fix. Of course there were the comic strips, and many toys and other products might give you a free mini-comic, but the two big ones were the monthly or bimonthly periodical, often called the “floppies”, and the graphic novel, a bigger story too small to be a regular comic that would take longer to read, like a novel. The periodicals would give you a monthly (or bimonthly but I’m not writing that every time) adventure with a main plot and a running subplot, like a TV series. You’d also have the extra sized annual, one-shot, or other special. These were still quick reads and easy to bring with you. It’s now the comic book got away from the newspapers and became a format on its own.

The graphic novel was a special thing. While some were collections of longer story arcs or collecting the works of a particularly famous creator, the majority were original stories. This is where the big events happened, or a story that could focus on a character than didn’t have enough of a fan following for their own series but still had enough fans or a writer had a story they wanted to tell with that character. There were also the occasional gimmicks like alternate universes, a comic done all on computer (both Batman and Iron Man had one of these), or something along those lines. Graphic novels are not special anymore.

In a time where stories are written for the trade, it might as well be a graphic novel. Few people are writing for periodicals anymore, as I’ve lamented many times and will again. However, I’ve been thinking about how trade writing and so many trade collections coming out has basically ruined what the graphic novel was for. The nature of the graphic novel has been damaged thanks to the trade collections, and even indie publishers are guilty of this.

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