The Amazing Screw-On Head

[LGM]

Character depth in a comic book? I suppose you expect pornos to contain no nudity or sex, too.

[Cluey]

I liked it alot, shame it wont be airing in the UK any time soon I guess.

[big brother]

Yeah, for character development go read a graphic novel like the Watchmen.

Comic books focus more on using made-up words for sound effects.

[LimpingFish]

It has overtones of Lovecraft, sure, but only the Cthulhu mythos and only in its depiction of the demon released at the climax.

The relationship between Head and Patience seems more like Poe than Lovecraft, as does the prior friendship between Head and Emperor Zombie.

Visually its very close to Mignola's comic work, which is a good thing, but, dare I say, Hellboy, and Mignola's other work for that matter, seem to work better in small doses. He creates a fantastic atmosphere in his stories, but plotwise I always feel a little short changed.

But then, I consider The Corpse (From the one-shot The Corpse and the Iron Shoes) to be Mignola's best Hellboy story, and I believe it runs no longer than twelve pages in print.

btw, Watchmen is overrated. Plus I disagree with the term Graphic Novel, as it appeared as a twelve-issue comicbook series before being collected in album form.

Although, I also generally disagree with the term Graphic Novel, when used to descibe a collected series of comicbooks. A true Graphic Novel appears in print in just that format and is designed to be read as such. But on a whole, it seems to me to be a snobs way of saying "I read comicbooks". But, pedantic as I am, I digress...

[big brother]

btw, Watchmen is overrated.

Star Wars is overrated. Still classic, despite that.

But yeah, I never really claimed that The Watchmen was amazing, just that has a good deal of character development. And since it's advertised as a graphic novel, I'm not really wrong there. So...um, not sure what the point is.

I mean, I could digress about how the word "porno" sounds infantile...

[LimpingFish]

"Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Originally published by DC Comics as a monthly limited series from 1986 to 1987, it was later republished as a trade paperback."

My point?

You attributed class to Watchmen, a comicbook, referring to it as a Graphic Novel, yet dismissing comicbooks in general.

I'm simply pointing out the contradiction. Also...

"The evolving term "graphic novel" is not strictly defined, and is sometimes used, controversially, to imply subjective distinctions in artistic quality between graphic novels and other kinds of comics. It is commonly used to disassociate works from the juvenile or humorous connotations of the terms "comics" and "comic book", implying that the work is more serious, mature, or literary than traditional comics. Following this reasoning, the French term "Bande Dessinée" is occasionally applied, by art historians and others schooled in fine arts, to dissociate comic books in the fine-art tradition from those of popular entertainment."

Like I said. Snobs.

[Las Naranjas]

I've only ever used the term "graphic novel" [which I think is a clunky term] to refer to a comic that's created with a finite length, even if it was originally published as a miniseries, just to distiguish it from other comic forms like the endless serials [which are most common] or strips.

But yeah, it is a unnecessary attempt to avoid a stigma which only comes from the foolish. People in the 17th century would have looked at Shakespere and said "Culture on the stage, how gauche, I far prefer those Florinitinian paintings".
Photography would never be a match for the painter's work, so cold, without heart!
Then in the early 20th century, film was obviously a low and cultureless alternative to theatre, right? No decent art would ever come from theatre.

But history has a way of making snobs look like idiots, that's of course if it isn't already painfully obvious.

[big brother]

I can do this, too:

"Watchmen is the only graphic novel to have won a Hugo Award, and is also the only graphic novel to appear on Time magazine's list of '100 best novels from 1923 to present.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen (cited source)

Here's the link to the TIME magazine article:
http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,watchmen,00.html

Anyways, the term itself is irrelevant (consistently used interchangeably) to my facetious original point about the character development. (You know, there's really no difference in the resulting media, yet depth can exist in one...forget it.)

[2ma2]

Watchmen overrated? Not at all! It is so thought out it hurts my creative soul; I can never accomplish something like it.

I think the term 'graphic novel' rose in northern America where the sole market is filled with superheroes and overall rather silly content. Not that I regard them as simple entertainment, some superhero material is pure gold. We usually don't have these themes in Europe, hence the medium's more accepted nature, especially in Belgium and France. The term 'comic' itself is troublesome as it implies some sort of comedy or equalent (such as 'manga' which more or less means 'non-serious picture'). I can see how few would call their work "graphic novel" instead of "comic novel". In Swedish, this isn't a problem as we use the word 'series' for comics, and the debate has not arisen here.

Oh, and I need to get my hands on a cable connection. Gotta see that pilot! Dam you cable providers!

[LimpingFish]

Graphic Novel: A single work, only published complete in a single volume.
Trade Paperback: A collection of  previously published individual, connected or otherwise, works, reissued in a single volume.

My definitions.

Watchmen is a trade paperback, and even though it's own publisher refers to it as a graphic novel, that doesn't make it one. It also refers to THE POWERPUFF GIRLS VOL. 1: TITANS OF TOWNSVILLE as a graphic novel.

A general misuse of the term, on a number of conflicting levels, seems rampant.