Nadda Genre

In a future publication scheduled for fall release, I'm going to explain why the term "genre" is inadequate and somewhat inaccurate when applied to graphic novels. On the heel's of yesterday's post about markets and GN's, here's another tidbit where thinking about markets can help us understand terminology. Though "graphic novel" is a marketing term, it is not a genre term within the markets. As ICV2 points out in another article on sales, graphic novels make up their own publishing category and can be compared to "genre" categories like horror, mystery, and sci-fi. Compared to them, but not considered one of them.

In her recent article "Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative" (in PMLA 123.2) Hillary Chute treats "comics as a medium - not as a lowbrow genre" (p.452) I think terms like medium and format are better used to describe comics and graphic novels.

I'll publicize the article more once it gets closer to its release date, but these two recent pieces deserved some attention, even if the article was submitted before I could add them to my reference page!