Graphic Novels
Graphic Novels:
Literature without Text?
Jan Baetens
Literary graphic novels: adaptation, illustration, collaboration, and beyond
More and more, the hype surrounding the graphic novel concerns its literary qualities.
Many graphic novels appear to have a literary subtext (in the case of adaptations) or present themselves, in a more radical form, as the visual development of a literary text that is completely reproduced within the graphic novel. In the former case, the literary graphic novel takes the form of an adaptation, as one may adapt a book on screen (think of David
Mazzuchelli’s version of City of Glass1). Various major mainstream publishers in France, the world leader in serious comics and graphic novel production, have now specialized series in this field.2 All these series are strongly and explicitly inspired by the pioneering work by authors such as Dino Battaglia (who adapted, for example, Maupassant), Alberto Breccia
(who made extremely creative reinterpretations of, among others, Poe and Lovecraft), or
Jacques Tardi (well known for his work on the detective novels by Léo Malet, for instance).
In the latter case, the graphic novel takes the form of an illustrated version of the original text. The French publisher Petit à Petit has a series of these “word and image” books, although for obvious reasons most examples concern poetry (Baudelaire, Verlaine,
Rimbaud, Hugo, Prévert, La Fontaine) rather than prose (short stories by Maupassant). The
Dutch artist Dick Matena has recently realized three “comics illustrations” of (more or less lengthy) novels by highly canonized Dutch and Flemish authors (Reve, Wolkers, Elsschot), which contrary to previous forms of novelistic works illustrated by comic artists (the LouisFerdinand Céline versions by JacquesTardi are the first example that come to mind) are real graphic novels: the layout is that of a comic book or graphic novel (in Europe the boundaries between the two genres remained
Literature without Text?
Jan Baetens
Literary graphic novels: adaptation, illustration, collaboration, and beyond
More and more, the hype surrounding the graphic novel concerns its literary qualities.
Many graphic novels appear to have a literary subtext (in the case of adaptations) or present themselves, in a more radical form, as the visual development of a literary text that is completely reproduced within the graphic novel. In the former case, the literary graphic novel takes the form of an adaptation, as one may adapt a book on screen (think of David
Mazzuchelli’s version of City of Glass1). Various major mainstream publishers in France, the world leader in serious comics and graphic novel production, have now specialized series in this field.2 All these series are strongly and explicitly inspired by the pioneering work by authors such as Dino Battaglia (who adapted, for example, Maupassant), Alberto Breccia
(who made extremely creative reinterpretations of, among others, Poe and Lovecraft), or
Jacques Tardi (well known for his work on the detective novels by Léo Malet, for instance).
In the latter case, the graphic novel takes the form of an illustrated version of the original text. The French publisher Petit à Petit has a series of these “word and image” books, although for obvious reasons most examples concern poetry (Baudelaire, Verlaine,
Rimbaud, Hugo, Prévert, La Fontaine) rather than prose (short stories by Maupassant). The
Dutch artist Dick Matena has recently realized three “comics illustrations” of (more or less lengthy) novels by highly canonized Dutch and Flemish authors (Reve, Wolkers, Elsschot), which contrary to previous forms of novelistic works illustrated by comic artists (the LouisFerdinand Céline versions by JacquesTardi are the first example that come to mind) are real graphic novels: the layout is that of a comic book or graphic novel (in Europe the boundaries between the two genres remained