Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and seventy-fifth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.
As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for Part 1 of this week's legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
The term "graphic novel" was first used on the cover of a DC Gothic romance series.
STATUS:
False
One of the most persistent debates in comic book history is what was the first "Graphic novel." The answer is practically impossible to pin down, as everyone seems to have their own position on the issue.
What's less debatable, though, is when the term "graphic novel" was coined.
In 1971, DC launched a Gothic romance comic book series (just in time for the Gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows, to go off the air. Comic book companies are always good at launching books meant to tie in to stuff after the stuff is over) called The Dark Mansion Of Forbidden Love, with an awesome George Ziel painted cover...
A common thing for DC at the time was to call stories that took up an entire issue to be a "novel-length" story.
DC soon launched The Sinister House of Secret Love, a companion series of Gothic romance with a painted cover by Victor Kalin...
In the second issue, with the Jerome Podwil painted cover. which was an issue-long story was called a "graphic novel"...
Some folks think that this is the debut of the term.
However, comic book reviewer Richard Kyle wrote a column in the fanzine Capa-Alpha #2 in 1964...
where he argued for a more "serious" term for comic books and he came up with "Graphic novel" (or "graphic story")...
Bill Spicer then named a magazine after Kyle'e term called Graphic Story Magazine...
A decade or so later, Will Eisner used the term on the cover of a collection of his Contract With God and he soon began known as the originator of the term...
Thanks to Richard Kyle for a cool term!
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In the latest TV Legends Revealed - Was Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: Next Generation going to be revealed to be an alien!?
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Feel free to suggest ideas for future legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com!