Grief is when we find out just how much smaller we really are than the the things that bring us grief. I wish it was more acceptable to talk about this stuff in mixed company.
Losing oneâs dog sucks, Iâm having to say goodbye to mine these days, and thereâs no easy way to do it.
We need a better word than âcomic.â
âTragicomicâ?
They tried, âgraphic novelâ, but its just meant to fool supposedly snooty people.
Iâm sorry to hear this. Losing those you love is always tough, and there really are no words to bring comfort. Iâve found that itâs just something we have to work through, hopefully with full support from family and friends. Also, I think people forget that we can grieve for our pets, too, who are just as much a part of our family as the rest of the family.
I think that graphic novel was generally meant for longer form comics than either the funny pages or comic books. I donât think itâs meant to indicate the sort of work it is, but more the format.
I donât think it was meant to describe the type of content either, but you wonât find watchmen seriously discussed as a comic book, instead it will be discussed as a graphic novel, same as sandman even though they were originally published as comic books.
I was searching for a Gaiman quote on this and I came across this site: http://diminished-blue.com/Call_Them_Comics.html
The actual quote:
âI attended a party where I introduced myself as a comic-book writer to a newspaperâs literary editor. But when the editor quickly realized who I actually was â and the glaze melted from his eyes â he offered me a correction tinged with astonishment: âMy God, man, you donât write comics, you write graphic novels.â
Relating the story to the Los Angeles Times in 1995, Gaiman said, âI suddenly felt like someone who had been informed that she wasnât a hooker, that in fact she was a lady of the evening.â
/pedant
I wonder when that happened to him⌠I think maybe originally it was more about format and it became more about content?
Feel free to be pedantic as youâd like on this topic! 
Iâve generally called such things âcartoonsâ unless they were either comic books or actual comic strips, though even as a kid I wasnât sure what to call Mary Worth or Apartment 3-G. Still, even for long-running strips with recurring characters and ongoing storylines, I always feel weird calling them âcomicâ strips if comedy isnât their primary focus. But when I call something like this a âcartoon,â people might be inclined to think Iâm talking about something animated.
There is probably an untranslatable French word that means âimages intended to reflect the absurdity of existence and the impossibility of making sense of life as it impinges on the individualâ
borrowed from here
A collection of comics is usually referred to as a trade paperback, and there are cases of some comics, like Gaimanâs Violent cases that were published explicitly as a graphic novel.
So whats the difference?
Violent cases was a self contained story published in a single volume, while Sandman was a monthly comic that took quite a few years to complete. Thatâs it. They both use the same storytelling conventions, share the same writer, Dave Mckean worked on both titles and they both use the same sequential art medium.
The three musketeers:
The relevant bit;
The Three Musketeers⌠is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, first serialized in MarchâJuly
We certainly donât make a significant distinction about this book because of the way it was originally published, and it changes nothing to call Sandman a comic book vs a graphic novel other than an apparent intent on how the story is meant to be perceived.
If I was a music snob I might be tempted to talk about the word âAlbumâ and compare itâs usage today to how it was used in some idealized past where an album wasnât just a collection of random songs, but where they were thematically inked or at least presented in such a manner as to form a cohesive whole.
I would maybe argue that an Album should be more than the sum of the songs it contains. And that certainly Katy Perryâs âTeenage dreamâ should not be considered in the same breath as say⌠âChicago IIâ
Iâd be wrong, but I might be able to convince some people if they already have any prejudices that I could latch on to.
My point is that the term has been used so arbitrarily that really, it seems like its just used to draw an apparent distinction between lowly comics and⌠something worth reading.
/pedantry
Its not that I care if you call something a graphic novel. I just care that the term âgraphic novelâ draws an apparent divide between comics and art.
Thanks! Thatâs all interesting stuffâŚ
As a music⌠historian (I donât think of myself as a snob), I can tell you that the album as we think of it conceptually, was pretty centered on the 60s - 80s era. Prior to that, early rock music was pretty single driven. And of course, the 78 offered much less flexibility in terms of length than the vinyl LP. It seems like this shift was in part driven by new technologies (vinyl records, but also multi-tracking), which allowed for more experiementation in how sound is delivered to the consumer. Plus, you can sell an album for more, so the industry was all over that. but you can see that shift over the course of the Beatles career in fact, with their early stuff being more single-driven, and then the album coming to the fore as their primary artistic format (and their insistence on this being art as much as mass culture).
See! I can be pedantic, too! Weâre all pendantic here, so no worries. Weâre a bunch of geeks showing off at some level!
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