Okay, we have a classification (okay so already you don’t agree with me, fine, just ignore the rest and call me a litera-nazi on the comments, just like mother), so what does it matter how you classify one or the other?

Well in this medium, a lot of it comes down to the antagonistic relationship it’s had with mainstream cultural commentary and the broader idea of “artistic legitimacy” (itself a nebulous, oxyMORONIC notion that needs to go the way of the Office Space printer).

Graphic novels, as a term, really gained footing after the mid 80s, when the triple header of Spiegelmans Maus, Moore/Gibbons Watchmen and Millers TDKR blew minds apart – succesfully yelling “SCROO YOOOOO” at the general consensus that comics were only really bits of cheap pulp to keep children happy with brightly coloured adventures.

(Yup, I know Watchmen and TDKR were published serially, but they had clear narrative endgames and no one ever, including the authors, talk about them as a serialised story, which is basically what happens with Dickens and stuff like Great Expectations. I’m happy with the comparison, unlike Dickens, TDKR is actually pleasurable to read).

Prior to this, strides had been made, O’Neill’s dark gothic Batman rebirth, his legendary Green Arrow/Lantern “My ward is a junkie” story, Englehart’s epic, romantic Batman run, the power of Robert Crumb, Stan Lee’s legendary rebellion against the Comic Book Code Authority’s rules on drugs with what would prove to be the greatest act in the end days of his mythic Marvel run. None of these, despite significant media publicity, truly countered the idea that Comics were effectively a trash medium.

So the 80s came and with it, the graphic novel, a term that operated as an exception to the comic book as trash rule. DC and Marvel were still exclusively in the spandex junk business, unless they hit out of the park, then and ONLY then, would the popular consensus (generally one of us, aged 14-16 screaming that Time had included it in their top 100, okay it was me) tolerate a comic or graphic novel as artistically legitimate.

And at this point, the term associations linger on way past when they should have died out. Graphic novels remain a term we associate with the high-brow stuff, the kind of story or art we can shake at cultural commentators and whine: “NO SEEEE COMICS ARE GROWN UP TOOOO VALIDATE US CRITICS WHO WROTE OFF AN ENTIRE MEDIUM BECAUSE PRECONCEPTIONS” whilst comic is a term we apply to off the rack 22 page publications that aren’t particularly memorable. Even the likes of Snyder’s Batman stories are already referred to in terms of their TPBs, his stories aren’t harked upon in issue numbers but in TPB titles like “Black Mirror”, “Court of Owls” or “Death of the family” as cumulative graphic novels instead of comics, a view that crystallised as his critical reception triggered a fairly meteoric rise in stature amongst the heat of Bat-fans.

Which is pointless, condescending and demonstrative of a lot of the comic/graphic novel community’s aggressively apologetic nature with itself. Graphic novels should not be a term that demarcates a work of “greater artistic validity” than a comic book – a crummy piece wrapped in hardback, a £25 RRP and a spot on the Waterstones shelves is still a crummy fucking piece. A comic you like – be it a weird 5 page indie thing you found or just the latest X-MEN: WE GAVE UP ON COHERENCE BEFORE CLAREMONT issue is good. Sure, like my “rule”, it lacks the length of a novel or It’s short, too short to be a “novel” in anyway and depending on the genre, a regularly published part of a story without care for an ending – but if you like it, it is good.

So there – comic is short and usually without damn for an ending and graphic novel is a longer piece with an aim to an end.

(And the ruleset out above of course isn’t 100 percent, far from it, the idea that there is a rule that can successfully classify an entire medium or segregate it is terrifying – but who knows, it might lend new purpose to terms that are so laden with masturbatory resentment).

A graphic novel isn’t better than a comic and a comic isn’t better than a graphic novel, a good story is just more enjoyable than a boring one.

So since I don’t see these terms going away anytime soon, I nominate rebooting them, Didio style, turning them into something that has nothing to do with “literary credibility” or any self-aggrandising pseudo-intellectual twattery and instead treat them as indicators of narrative duration and intent.

Lay down the terms, pitchforks and care for what mainstream publications have to say, and just enjoy them. Long or short.

THAT’S WHAT SHE SAAAAAAAAAAAIIII—-*dies*