This week’s Top 5 Wednesday journeys into the realm of Graphic Novels. I grew up reading some periodical comic in the newspaper such as Dick Tracy and Garfield and a few Archie books I found around the house. From since then and jumping into adulthood, I do not think I have read any graphic novels.
Then, I wondered about the difference between comic and graphic writing, so I poke around the web for a wee bit of research. My post for Top 5 Wednesday is a short paragraph from an article from Encyclopedia Britannica giving an insight into Comic and Graphic Novels.
The argument is further complicated by the fact that the supposed need for the term graphic novel grows out of what might be considered American and British cultural prejudices. No equivalent term is required in continental Europe or in Japan, where the acceptance of comics as both an art form and a literary mode is unproblematic. In Europe, and especially in France, comics, or bande dessinée (“drawn strips”), have long been collected in high-quality albums, with themes and styles appropriate to a mature audience. This adult comic culture has coexisted very comfortably with comics for children, with no supposed contradiction in terms. In Japan a huge proportion of the population routinely reads comics (called manga), which achieve a dizzying variety of genres and themes. The emergence of the term graphic novel must therefore be understood in terms of the cultural attitudes that shaped it.
Christopher Murray
Please follow theEncyclopedia link for the full article.
Could you share some of your graphic novels and the reasons why you like them in the comment section below? Do you think that graphic novel and comics are the same?
Yelhispressing 
I used to think they were the same. I’ve read only one graphic book, it was a football series, which even though I really enjoyed, I can’t remember the name. Tho, my sister LOVEs Archie.
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In some cutures, they are the same but differ in other cultures. Tell your sister heyyy, Archie was fun.
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