A LITTLE BIT OF FORETHOUGHT: CALLING COMICS GRAPHIC NOVELS IS AN EXERCISE IN SPECIOUS DIFFERENTIATION 

Let me begin with a disclaimer of sorts. I don't care if someone wants to call a particular book a graphic novel rather than a comic. If it helps you sell your grandiose idea that's just good old shyster salesmanship, i.e.,, Capitalism. I somehow survived the societal upheaval associated with distinguishing between an action figure and a doll. This is comparatively easy. 

We do, however, need to recognize and acknowledge that the distinction is classist, elitist and thoroughly specious. Just because you view your porn in a museum doesn't make it any less pornographic and just because you call the book you're reading a graphic novel doesn't mean it's any closer to a legitimate literature than a back issue of Bugs Bunny or Spider-Man. It's a freaking comic book, dude. And before you get your tidy whiteys in too much of a twist, my deployment of the phrase, legitimate literature, was purposeful, because I would rather read Batman than Silas Marner any day of the week. 

This is important because society requires us to justify our simple pleasures and we choose to do that by changing something's name or classification. In my youth, it was unacceptably effeminate for boys to play with dolls, but it was practically John Wayne masculine to play soldier through action figures. The irony lost on most people here being that while Wayne played hyper masculine cowboys and soldiers and eventually got involved in promoting a ridiculous war in Vietnam, when he had the chance to serve his country, diligently dodged the draft with plausible deniability. Jimmy Stewart flew missions over Germany and eventually reached Brigadier General in the Air Force, but when he played opposite Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, he was cast as the shaky beneficiary of Wayne's secretive courage. Well it was pretty damned secretive and the movie was a downright laugh riot because of the unspoken truth. In like manner, it was OK for boys to play with dolls as long as they were G.I. Joes. We'll save the world-ending possibility that Joe could have been the first out example of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" for another day. To borrow from Valance, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." So Wayne would go down as the hero and Stewart an undeserving beneficiary. Likewise, action figures would become a thing and so would graphic novels. 

The thing about graphic novels is that they're intended to impart a sense of intellect not associated with comics. Beforehand, you were literally thought a Gomer or Goober if you were a grownup who read them. It is not without reason that Gomer Pyle's catchphrase was "Shazam!" The notion being that only a guy who languished in a cultural backwater and pumped gas for a living would be caught dead reading a comic, because the assumption was that such people were functionally illiterate and otherwise ill-educated and backwards. They needed the pictures to understand the story. While this was an unfortunate stereotype, it was also an effective stigma. Comics of any intellectual value were unavailable as a medium of communications and entertainment because they branded the reader a dolt. They were also falling through the floor in terms of sales because the Comics Code Authority limited them to kid stuff of the least offensive and most vapid variety. 

The fact is that after the price of an average comic rose precipitously, it stopped targeting kids, but since the Comics Code Authority still held sway, you either published your radical ideas in underground comix that had limited distribution and therefore limited sales or you published black and white magazines with far more mature content than had ever been dreamed of in the days of EC horrors and crime books. The saucy femme fatale was replaced with the naked vampire who routinely engaged other females in softcore porn and overt bondage fantasies. Of course, so had Wonder Woman back in the day; and, had anyone poked into the life of that book's creator, they would have been shocked and appalled in a most pearl clutching manner and probably come down with a case of the vapors. 

The through line in all of this is the simple fact that hypocrisy is foremost in the entire discussion. There is no need to be ashamed of reading comics of whatever variety no matter your advanced years and there is no need for coming up with fancy sounding titles to provide cover for your dirty little secret. It was never dirty and it never needed to be secret.