There’s an interesting shift happening in publishing regarding comic books and graphic novels, which I was able to observe firsthand while attending one of the two comics-oriented conventions that took place recently in Toronto. More than ever, readers, retailers and the book publishing industry in general are unconcerned about the published form a story takes. It can be a prose novel, an illustrated novel or a graphic novel—no one cares as long as it’s a good story.
The first convention, which I was unable to attend, was the Paradise Toronto Comicon, which featured such well-known creators as Michael Golden and Gail Simone. The second, to which I was an invited guest and speaker, was the 2007 Book Expo Canada.
On the surface, most people wouldn’t guess that the BEC was comics-centric, which, to me, only reinforces my theory about the shift that’s taking place: the mainstream book trade is no longer making distinctions based on format or medium. Comics, graphic novels and their attendant creators were all over the BEC.
As a creator, I’ve rarely made distinctions between the projects I do. On my desk at present are the third and fourth Imaginarium Geographica prose novels-in-progress for Simon & Schuster; the first issue of Starchild: Mythopolis II; and the Here, There Be Dragons screenplay for Warner Bros. The only difference between them is that some are more illustration-rich than others—a distinction that grows less significant if you consider I’m storyboarding the Here, There Be Dragons film, too.
I’m an old-school comics guy, with a long tenure as a reader and creator. I’m a relatively new traditional book guy, at least in regards to professional credits. But those two career tracks are merging in new and unexpected ways.
I attended a private reception the night I arrived, along with guest of honor Stephen King and the illustrious novelist Margaret Atwood (toastmaster Clive Barker having departed early), and I quickly realized that every bookseller there was not only discussing the books that we each had on the horizon—but also our various comics projects. King has the spectacular (in both execution and performance) The Dark Tower comic from Marvel; Barker has the gorgeous Great and Secret Show and Thief of Always; and I talked about the new Starchild series, which is going to include a serialized novella that ties into my Imaginarium Geographica novels. (Nothing in comics yet for Margaret. Sorry, Margaret.)
At the related Booked! Speaking event at the Harbourfront Center (for which people paid cash money just to hear me, Kenneth Oppel and Julia Golding speak), my comics were the subject of half of my questions from the audience. A day later, at the formal S&S booth signing for my forthcoming The Search for the Red Dragon it was a similar scene. This pattern repeated itself for three days, and what it meant only crystallized for me at the last, uh, event: an informal gathering that consisted of me, author and Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs, authors John Connolly and Jeffery Deaver and publicist Marcus Tamm at a smelly Irish bar at 1 a.m. What the booksellers wanted was more stories from a creator whose work they enjoyed and were able to sell. What format that work comes in was far less important than the announcement that more work was forthcoming.
In the comics direct market, I’m wondering if we might (still) be fighting a stigma that was once very real, but which may no longer apply: that consumers, readers, librarians, educators, Swedish chefs, et al., have a resistance to the medium itself. A million copies of Bone (which had legs and tenure in comics already) may have helped crack that perception.
It works the other way, too. It certainly helped my own position at Simon & Schuster to have my novels displayed (and sold) at traditional comics shops like Jim Hanley’s Universe and Forbidden Planet, mostly because they had customers who would recognize the cover art if not my name. And I know small incidents like those are stirring up thoughts on various levels.
Last year, when S&S children’s publishing president Rubin Pfeffer and S&S senior editor Liesa Abrams told me about the recently announced plans to start a divisionwide graphic novel initiative at Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, I immediately started discussing ways we could cross-promote my previous and current work. Including a prose novella in my new comics (which was inspired by Brad Meltzer cross-promoting the Justice League comics and his novel The Book of Fate) could be followed up by an original graphic novel tied to the comics—which would be promoted by the new novels. And that’s before we get around to repackaging the six Starchild trades in our backlist.
As I said—the BEC was not a comics-oriented event, but comics and graphic novels were everywhere. Frank Beddor is getting as much acclaim from his Desperado comic Hatter M as from his Looking Glass Wars novels; Goosebumps and Artemis Fowl are augmenting their prose offerings with graphic novels of new content; and then there are books like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which is as much a combination of illustrated prose and storyboards as I’ve ever seen.
I’m not the only creator crossing the boundaries with this kind of hybrid approach, either. Who else do you think the readership for the profusely illustrated Baltimore book by Mike Mignola and Chris Golden will be? And more importantly, what will those readers be looking to buy next? Hellboy? Golden’s other novels?
I say both, because that’s what I saw at Book Expo Canada. People in the book trade are enjoying—and enjoying selling—good stories. And they aren’t making distinctions any more about how many pictures come with the words, or in what order they’re in. That’s going to make the next few years very, very interesting.
James A. Owen is the author and illustrator of the novel Here, There Be Dragons from Simon & Schuster, and the graphic novel series Starchild, which is being continued this Fall in Starchild: Mythopolis II from Desperado Publishing and Coppervale Studio. His work is being published in more than a dozen languages, and both the books and graphic novels are being developed for tv and film.
