What is a graphic novel, and how is it different from comic books? And why does the distinction cause friction among sequential art fans?

If you were to load up Youtube, you would get the idea that Graphic Novels are merely extra long comic books collected into a story collection, and sold for trade.

But this is simply innaccurate, especially in the modern context. Graphic novels today generally means books design with a specific novel length word count in mind, with the aim of having a script that functions at roughly the same length as a short novel.

Even in comic book shops, youll still get disinformation, like people saying that your stories should be less than 30,000 words or nobody will read it. This was before I was attacked by a certain kind of rude comic book fan. But this divide had been around in sequential art fandoms for years.

The problem with basing Graphic Novels on the standards of comic books, is that it creates a wrong impression about what graphic novels can do. A bit like saying all novels are based around the heroes journey framework, even though there are several ways to plot your story.

And yet publishers that specialize specifically in graphic noveld do exist, and there is no longer any reason to specifically go for comic book format when its possible to make it as a Graphic Novelist.

Graphic Novels do not necessarily naturally split up into multiple installments, sometimes with sections that are of different lengths. So you would get issues that are either to short or to long.

But Im not going to base what I do as a graphic novelist on standards expected by Pulp Fiction enthusiasts. Im a dystopian writer, and its my right to create these things.

In my next post, Ill go into ways Im diverging from Comics and to a lesser extent graphic novels. Also I managed to finish my conlang font, so there is that to look forward to.