Historical Background
Our project was informed by the history of comics and graphic novels and an understanding of the differences and similarities of the two formats. For example, using the terms comic books and graphic novels interchangeably can seem like a simple mistake, but the terms are not synonymous. Graphic novels are extensions of comics (Master Class staff, 2021). Although both formats feature illustration-based storytelling, they have distinctions that reveal substantive differences. Scott McCloud (1993) defines this format as “juxtaposed pictorials and other images in deliberate sequence intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer (p.20). As a format, comics initially tackled social justice, equity, and politics, as in the works of Thomas Nast (Halloran, 2021). Creators' personal views were presented in the comics of the Depression and WW2 years as were reactions to the moral panic of the 1950s. These early precursors to graphic novels heightened the relevance of political content in the comics of the early 1970s comic books and strips, such as in Doonesbury (Garry Trudeau, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Doonesbury).
In short, a comic book is an excerpt from a longer serialized story that’s told through illustration. As an illustrated text, a graphic novel includes a beginning, middle, and finish. A definitive book will supply the sort of resolution that one expects from a publication, even if it’s part of a sequence. Effectively, this produces a graphic text that is longer and more meaningful than the usual comic book, and it will be a serialized excerpt from a larger story. Our focus was on the longer graphic novel format.
Current Interests in Graphic Novels
More recently, graphic novels have begun to appeal to new populations of readers such as children (El Deafo, Bell, 2014; Smile, Telgemeier, 2010), young adolescents (New Kid, Craft, 2019), and adults (Dr. Fate, Levitz, Liew, & Loughridge, 2016; The Sandman, Gaiman, 2018). They include informational/historical content as in March I (Lewis, Aydin, & Powell, 2013) and Maus (Spiegelman, 1996), as well as science content in T-Minus: The Race to the Moon (Ottaviani, 2009). The focus of these graphic novels covers a range of content area topics including misunderstandings of disability, fantasy, self-identity, social injustices for people of color, and subject area information. For literacy development, they can also build vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency competencies for all students (Smetana & Grisham, 2021), and inferential insight through the process of connecting panels of pictorials. Marlatt and Dallacqua (2019) found that “using a graphic novel and introducing it strategically to teacher candidates complicated their ideas about literacy engagement. Further, our work challenged teacher candidates to consider literacy practices, especially involving nonfiction texts, that are multidimensional and critical” (p. 1). Romagnoli, Bazler, and Van Sickle (2018) found that the creation of graphic novelettes “…facilitated the learning of scientific concepts while privileging the literacy skills students learn in all of their classes” (p. 73). Still, many teachers have yet to integrate graphic novels into their curriculum (McClanahan & Nottingham, 2019), requiring efforts on the part of teacher educators to build comfort levels and knowledge about applications for recognition and use of graphic novels in classroom literacy events.