From Comic to Graphic and from Book to Novel: Sandman’s Invisible Authors and the Quest for Literariness

Abstract

The comic book is dead-long live the graphic novel! These words might make a fitting epitaph for the British-American comics industry's development during the twentieth century. During this time the discourse around comics publishing and the books themselves have undergone a series of aesthetic, commercial, conceptual and cultural changes (Round 2010a). This chapter will explore the move towards bookishness and literariness (both of which, as previous chapters have argued, are connected deeply to the novel-network) in contemporary British-American comics, using DC Vertigo's Sandman series as a case study.It argues that this comic enacts the particular status struggles of a collaborative medium against the 'graphic novel' brand. It concludes by mapping its findings back onto the processes and changes at work in the novel's own quest for literariness, and reflecting on what this means for definitions of cultural worth, the performativity of the author function, and our understanding of artistic creation and ownership. Novel, graphic novel, and authorship are linked here to quarrels about literariness and symbolic value that feature as two key nodes in the novel-network: affecting the novel-form, the novel-commodity, and the novel-as-reference-point.The words we use to speak of many comics today instantly reveal the shift in perception that has taken place. Although weekly and monthly serialized titles still exist, comics stores and mainstream bookstores now also offer an array of collected editions under the umbrella term 'graphic novel'. This product diversification affects the graphic-novel-form and the symbolic value of the graphic-novel-as-commodity. We have moved from comic book to graphic novel-that is, from comic to graphic, and from book to novel-with all that connotes. While "book" is a material object, without a description of content (and could refer to a textbook, a manual, or even a blank notebook), a novel is something different: an aspiration, an escape, a new and unique experience ("novel"). Whereas the "comic" is lighthearted entertainment, the "graphic" is explicit and visual. The graphic-novel-as-referencepoint now carries the weight of these expectations, echoed in the numerous news articles reporting that comics have now "grown up" (Pizzino 2016).The graphic-novel-form has also reflected back onto the aesthetic of both monthly comic books and collected series. Digital art, glossy pages, and elaborate covers now feature on the majority of titles. This makes the comic book commodity feel like a more permanent