{"id":105,"date":"2016-08-15T13:41:47","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T17:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/?p=105"},"modified":"2016-10-24T15:23:44","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T19:23:44","slug":"richard-kyle-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/blog\/2016\/08\/15\/richard-kyle-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Kyle Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Royer, Richard Kyle and Erik Larsen. From San Diego Comic Con 2011, Jack Kirby Tribute Panel.<\/p><\/div>\n

From about 1998 to 2012 I did interviews off and on for CollectorTimes.com under the column name Coville’s Clubhouse. The website stopped updating in 2014 and has since gone off line. I’ll be reposting my interviews here one at a time in no particular order and in some cases be talking a bit about the interview. This one is\u00a0was published online in the July 2012 edition of Collector Times.<\/p>\n

This interview with Richard Kyle was the last one I done. I was “retired” from doing interviews but this was an opportunity that I could not resist. I had learned from Bob Beerbohm that the first person to use\/create the term “Graphic Novel” was Richard Kyle. In 2011 San Diego Comic Con was celebrating 50 Years of Comic Fandom and brought in a number of\u00a0people involved with the earliest comic fanzines and Richard Kyle was one of them.<\/p>\n

After a panel he was on, I asked him about doing an interview some time after the con was over. He agreed and we exchanged phone numbers. I called him, we did the interview, I transcribed it and mailed it to him for review. Then I broke my right foot. Richard mailed back an altered transcription which I read, I knew would want to make changes to but didn’t do anything about it for a while. My office was upstairs and I was living downstairs on a lazy boy chair as my foot needed to be elevated at all times otherwise it would swell.<\/p>\n

After my foot healed somewhat and with some prodding from Richard, I got back to the interview and we worked out an mutually agreed upon transcription of the interview. I also got Richard to give me permission to post the original column, giving his definition of the Graphic Novel. He also had another column that he wanted posted as well about his theory on comics, which I happily did.<\/p>\n

Some\u00a0of the interview goes into more detail about what he meant by Graphic Novel. Around this time there was much discussion online about what a Graphic Novel was by people in the industry. Some would say it had to be an original story, not a collection of previously printed comics and that Maus &\u00a0Watchmen weren’t really Graphic Novels. I heard Will Eisner on a panel insist it wasn’t about “two mutants smashing each other” not long before he passed away. Others felt it had to be a complete story that ended and books like The Walking Dead series didn’t fit the definition. One creator believed it was the story that mattered and not the format. Some creators still have animosity towards the term and only have it on their books begrudgingly, in part due to what could be incorrect assumptions\u00a0of what the term is supposed to represent.<\/p>\n

I thought the best thing to do was to go to the source, Richard Kyle and get his take on what he meant when he created the term\u00a0Graphic Novel. The interview covers more than just his definition of the term Graphic Novel, but I’ll let you read about the other things Richard has done within comics in the interview itself.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle came up with the term “graphic novel” in a 1964 article titled “The Future of\u00a0Comics.”<\/a>\u00a0He was a contributor to early comic fanzines and often\u00a0argued that the comics industry should publish more sophisticated\u00a0stories for an older audience. He was also a comics retailer and in 1976\u00a0co-published the first book identified as a “graphic novel,” Beyond Time\u00a0and Again by George Metzger. I met Richard at the San Diego Comic Con\u00a02011 and he agreed to be interviewed about his thoughts on the graphic\u00a0novel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0I guess we’ll get started with your background. Where abouts were you\u00a0born?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: Oakland, California in 1929. A couple of months later the stock\u00a0market crashed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0Did your family go through hardship during the Great Depression?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: Not the Depression itself, initially. My father had tuberculosis\u00a0and was on 100% medical disability from the Navy, so there was enough\u00a0money to get by. He’d been in the submarine service – I think he served\u00a0on the D-1 – and a chlorine gas accident had seriously damaged his\u00a0lungs. Tuberculosis set in. He died when I was four years old, and\u00a0although my mother remarried, the years afterward were not easy. It\u00a0wasn’t until the war came along that things began to get better. Then\u00a0there were jobs for everyone. So after my mother and stepfather\u00a0divorced, I left school to work. I got my education from science fiction\u00a0magazines, pulp magazines, detective stories, and comic books. On\u00a0balance, they were no worse teachers than the ones in public schools.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0When did you get interested in comic books?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: Apparently with comic books with the first regularly published\u00a0comic book – Famous Funnies. Maybe its first issue. At the time, there\u00a0weren’t any others for me to see. Now I know it was made of up of\u00a0newspaper comic strip reprints. Then, I didn’t have a clue.<\/p>\n

One evening I went to the corner grocery with my stepfather to get milk\u00a0and bread. Right beside the cash register was a pile of comic books. I’d\u00a0never seen anything like them. They cost a dime, the equivalent of two\u00a0dollars in today’s money, and that was a lot in the Depression – so I\u00a0knew better than to ask for a copy. Especially since I couldn’t read\u00a0worth beans. But, read ’em or not, I was in love with comic books the\u00a0minute I saw them. They were something new, and I’ve always been in love\u00a0with new.<\/p>\n

I haven’t any memory of actually buying a comic book early on. I know I\u00a0must’ve read practically everything that was being printed, however,\u00a0because I have scraps of memories of so many of them. From New Comics to\u00a0Pioneer Picture Stories to the early Funny Pages, to the newspaper strip\u00a0reprint comic books and so on. Although I don’t remember most of them in\u00a0detail, I do remember individual strips. Siegel and Shuster’s “Dr.\u00a0Occult,” and “Radio Squad,” “The Clock,” “The Wake of the Wander,” and\u00a0others. The Clock was probably the first masked character in comic\u00a0books, although his mask was just a square black cloth with slits cut\u00a0out for the eyes. He left a card behind, something like The Saint. It\u00a0said “The Clock Strikes,” or something like that. He had his own private\u00a0torture chamber –really-that he used to get the truth out of bad guys\u00a0[laughter]. As near as I recall, there was an episode where he had a guy\u00a0hanging up by his hands, trying to keep his bare feet off broken glass.<\/p>\n

“The Clock” was created by George Brenner who later would take him over\u00a0to Quality, where Brenner became editor. At Quality he would also do\u00a0“Bozo, the Robot,” about a guy fighting crime inside a giant,\u00a0rocket-propelled hot water heater with arms and legs and lots of\u00a0rivets-an early-day Iron Man-and a strip called “711,” about a guy –\u00a0inmate #711 – who escaped jail every episode to fight crime. And then\u00a0broke back in at night to hide his secret identity. Something like that.<\/p>\n

But they’re only pieces of memories until just a little while before\u00a0Superman appeared. Then I-and the other kids-suddenly became conscious\u00a0of comic books as something unlike anything else. Guys stopped\u00a0collecting Big Little Books and started collecting comic books. We got\u00a0them used from a nearby Salvation Army store.<\/p>\n

I loved Siegel and Shuster’s “Slam Bradley,” in Detective Comics. As\u00a0long as it was drawn by Shuster, I liked it more than “Superman.” Then\u00a0there was Paul Gustavson’s great “Fantom of the Fair,” for Amazing\u00a0Mystery Funnies, about a caped crime-fighter who lived in the catacombs\u00a0under the New York World’s Fair. It was produced by Funnies Inc., one of\u00a0the original comic book art studios. And over at Blue Bolt, from Novelty\u00a0Press, Funnies Inc. had Bob Davis’ terrific, and now virtually forgotten\u00a0“Dick Cole, Wonder Boy.” He wasn’t a costumed character, but the strip\u00a0was a great favorite of mine. Funnies, Inc. also produced “The Human\u00a0Torch” and “Sub-Mariner” for Timely\/Marvel, along with Tarp\u00e9 Mills’\u00a0forgotten “Fantastic Feature Films,” another favorite.<\/p>\n

In fact, I guess it was Funnies Incorporated that I was a fan of more\u00a0than any single publisher, including DC-although I was a great Batman\u00a0fan. I’d initially been a full-on fan of “Superman,” then Joe started\u00a0doing halfhearted layouts. But when it was Siegel and Shuster together\u00a0it was a great strip.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0Yes, they put together a studio and were asked to crank out a bunch of\u00a0work quickly and the quality of it went downhill.<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: Still, they also had a unique touch. Take “Slam Bradley.” Slam was\u00a0a detective, he had a partner named Shorty. He was Slam Bradley’s pal.\u00a0The little guy rode around on Slam’s shoulder a lot of times. He was\u00a0ridiculous when you think about it, but as a kid without a father, I\u00a0identified with Shorty. A lot of other kids my age did too. There were a\u00a0lot of ’em in orphanages in those days. But, Joe left to produce\u00a0“Superman,” even though Jerry was still writing the stories, it wasn’t\u00a0the same. There was a magic between Jerry and Joe that made their work\u00a0together unforgettable.<\/p>\n

Once, I was talking with Jerry about how much I liked “Slam Bradley,”\u00a0and he said that it was created after “Superman” but published first.\u00a0That it was a more realistic development of the “Superman” idea, which\u00a0the publishers of the day thought was too far-fetched for the customers.\u00a0And if you think about it, Fawcett’s “Captain Marvel” has the same\u00a0structure as “Slam Bradley”-in one, a young boy is literally transformed\u00a0into a strongman, in the other a little guy gets to ride around on his\u00a0shoulder, almost becoming him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0Jumping ahead, how did you discover comic fanzines?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: A science fiction fanzine I subscribed to mentioned Dick Lupoff’s\u00a0fanzine Xero and praised its comics coverage. I subscribed, and Dick\u00a0asked me to write a piece about the Fox line of comics for him. [Roy\u00a0Thomas’ Alter Ego #101 has just reprinted it.] At the same time, comics\u00a0fandom was forming, and because of the Fox article I became a part of it.\u00a0I’m not an organizer, so my contribution to the creation of comics\u00a0fandom was mainly the comics stuff I wrote.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0From what I’m reading, you came up with the terms “graphic novel” and\u00a0“graphic story” in Capa Alpha #2. This was in 1964. How did you come up\u00a0with those terms?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: It’s curious. Until recently, I thought I’d invented them solely\u00a0for Capa Alpha. But a while back, I discovered an earlier remark in an\u00a0old letter of mine where I said “there ought to be a name for more\u00a0serious comic book stories.” So it must have been in the back of my mind.<\/p>\n

I was aware that Lev Gleason’s editor Charles Biro–Daredevil, Boy, and\u00a0Crime Does Not Pay–called his more grown-up comics “illustories.” And,\u00a0as I’ve mentioned, in the mid-’30s a few comic books tried putting\u00a0“picture-stories” in their title. And then Picture Stories from the\u00a0Bible, of course. (And that in the ’50s, EC had identified their new and\u00a0lame half-text, half-comics stories as “picto-fiction.”) But they were\u00a0really “shame names,” except Biro’s, that tried to avoid the perceived\u00a0semi-literacy of “comic book,” not names created to describe the form\u00a0accurately and to celebrate comic books for what they really are.<\/p>\n

I wanted a name to match the kinds of stories I wanted to read-that is,\u00a0stories for guys in their late teens to their mid-forties that used all\u00a0the conventions of the “comic book” without apology, sound effects,\u00a0motion lines and all the other devices that a lot of editors and writers\u00a0and artists were ashamed of. I was aware of how careful I would have to\u00a0be, given the failure of earlier attempts. So I thought of basic words\u00a0and terms. “Novel” and “story” were about as basic as you could get. And\u00a0“graphic”-my dictionary told me-was exactly right. [I used the\u00a0Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Fifth Edition, definitions 1, 2\u00a0and 3.] The words felt good in my mouth, too, and that was important.<\/p>\n

So, “graphic story” and “graphic novel” were it. And why these\u00a0commonplace words were called pretentious, or why comics for grown-ups\u00a0were, too, I’ll never know.<\/p>\n

However, no one in Capa Alpha commented on this column-nor any other\u00a0column of mine. So when Bill Spicer, the publisher of Fantasy\u00a0Illustrated, invited me to take “Graphic Story Review” over to FI, I\u00a0jumped at the chance. His magazine, which would be renamed Graphic Story\u00a0Magazine, was the single most important and influential fan magazine of\u00a0that time.<\/p>\n

I soon realized no professional would take the advice of a fan. I had\u00a0thought the comic book publishers would be smart enough to at least test\u00a0a comics magazine in a good-looking, uncontaminated format that had only\u00a0grown-up stories in it. But none of them ever did-except Lev Gleason,\u00a0Charles Biro’s publisher on Boy, Daredevil and Crime Does Not Pay–and\u00a0he chickened-out before Tops’ first sales figures came in. Tops was the\u00a0same size as Life magazine and was displayed with the grown-up\u00a0periodicals, so it had a job penetrating the market. However, its final\u00a0sales figures for Tops weren’t that bad at all. I know because I was\u00a0working for a major San Francisco magazine distributor at the time. A\u00a0lot of the big newsstands sold out three or four times.<\/p>\n

It is amazing how conservative comic book publishers have been over the\u00a0years. Even in the days when they were taking in money hand-over-fist\u00a0they were afraid to do anything new. The publishers needed a demo.\u00a0They’ve always needed a demo.<\/p>\n

Years later, in 1976, there was an opportunity to provide that demo, and\u00a0when Denis Wheary and I published George Metzger’s Beyond Time and Again\u00a0in hardback we subtitled it “A Graphic Novel.” It had taken its time,\u00a0but once that demo stared the publishers in the face they finally\u00a0accepted it-after Will Eisner legitimized the term, with a book that\u00a0wasn’t a novel. The publishers were afraid to the end.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0Now did you see Graphic Novels as a literary designation, for stories\u00a0that were more sophisticated regardless of how they were published or\u00a0more of a format, like a think hardcover book?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: Both. Because one requires the other. In the literary world “short\u00a0story” and “novel” don’t just describe the length, they also describe\u00a0the complexity of the material and suggest the seriousness of it. So I\u00a0saw the graphic novel as having content that was as complex and serious\u00a0as a motion picture or a text novel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0You weren’t thinking about the Europeans-?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: No. The Wikipedia entry for “graphic novel” says that I created it\u00a0to describe European comics, and that I regarded them as superior to\u00a0American comics. That’s wrong. Some were, some weren’t. At the time I\u00a0came up with the term “graphic novel” in 1964, I hadn’t seen-or heard\u00a0about-any of the European albums except “Tin-Tin”. I was introduced to\u00a0the others in ’70 or ’71 by Fred Patten, a comics fan and member of\u00a0LASFS, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, who became my partner in\u00a0an international comics and fiction bookstore. We carried only new,\u00a0in-print, books and magazines. No back issues. Fred wrote and spoke\u00a0French, so we had access to everything, fan and professional, that was\u00a0being published in Europe. But that was years after I introduced\u00a0“graphic novel.”<\/p>\n

It’s true enough that up to that time, with few exceptions-say a piece\u00a0by Jack Cole, or Will Eisner or Kurtzman or Krigstein or Kirby or Alex\u00a0Toth or-very soon-Jim Steranko, American comics seldom presented what I\u00a0would regard as serious graphic novels or graphic stories. And, even\u00a0when the exception came along, it was almost always presented in a\u00a0format that made it seem shoddy and cheesy until you took a second look.<\/p>\n

Actually, I shouldn’t say “serious” in this connection. I should say\u00a0“grown-up.” I didn’t demand that the stories be thoughtful and profound\u00a0and grim and all that. Just something that would interest and entertain\u00a0me as a grown-up. But despite exceptions, despite superior packaging,\u00a0the Europeans weren’t doing that much better than we were. They had\u00a0brilliant layouts by Guido Crepax, Hugo Pratt, Druillet, and Mobius, but\u00a0we had the guys I mentioned, Cole, Eisner, Kurtzman, Krigstein, Kirby,\u00a0Toth, and Steranko, and others, who were admired by the Europeans.<\/p>\n

Anyway, despite the refusal of the American comic books publishers to\u00a0experiment with a fan-created term and format, “graphic novel”\u00a0eventually caught on, and the professionals were forced to accept it.\u00a0Even public libraries have a graphic novel section now. And it turns out\u00a0that despite all the professional resistance here in the U.S., they’d\u00a0been using the term in Portuguese for years-as “novela grafica,” or\u00a0something similar. I wish I had known. It would have been a lot easier\u00a0to talk professionals here into using the term if professionals there,\u00a0even in another language, were using it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0Some people think a graphic novel needs to have a beginning, middle,\u00a0and an end. That it can’t continue on, book after book, with an endless\u00a0narrative. Do you have an opinion on that?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: You can do anything with a graphic novel that you can do with a\u00a0text novel – good or bad. Somebody once described a novel as a\u00a0full-length portrait of the author’s universe, and a short story as a\u00a0detail from that portrait. That applies to the “graphic novel” and the\u00a0“graphic story” too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0Something sequential-like?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: No, not sequential. At least, not completely. I’d say “Narrative\u00a0Art.” “Sequential” is a beautiful, important-sounding word that seems to\u00a0describe comic book art at large. But it doesn’t. It only describes\u00a0newspaper strip art. Reality isn’t merely a series of so-called “still”\u00a0pictures strung end-to-end, like a movie or newspaper strip. It’s\u00a0endlessly complex, and the comic book story – the graphic novel and the\u00a0graphic story – has the capacity to portray that world more fully, more\u00a0realistically, than the simplistic cause-and-effect world of the daily\u00a0newspaper strip.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0In what way?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: The comic book story couldn’t develop in newspapers. There was only\u00a0a limited amount of space, three or four panels, except on Sundays,\u00a0where the best they had to work with was a page. And newspapers were in\u00a0the news business, not the comic strip business. They hired news\u00a0editors, not full-time comic editors. Comics were tolerated because they\u00a0brought in readers, not because they wanted comic strips defiling their\u00a0newspapers, taking the place of real news — and the newspaper\u00a0syndicates served those papers. Many editors were openly hostile to\u00a0comics. And still are. They’ve never understood that just as newspapers\u00a0cover current news, comics in those same newspapers cover current\u00a0emotions. The syndicates are no better.<\/p>\n

A sort of exception was Will Eisner’s “Spirit Section,” and it was\u00a0inadequate. Despite Eisner’s best intentions, there was the short story\u00a0limitation. Not much room fro growth there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0What kind of growth?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: The panels of comic book stories – graphic stories and graphic\u00a0novels – relate not only to the frame behind and the frame ahead, as the\u00a0frames of newspaper strips and movies do, but, like a hologram, they\u00a0relate to everything – not only the frame in front and the frame behind,\u00a0but to the whole page or spread or book, just the way we relate to the\u00a0universe around us. Our modern conception of “time” hasn’t been with us\u00a0very long. Just a few years ago, before the invention of the movies, the\u00a0ordinary person would describe “time” as an endlessly flowing river,\u00a0formless, without boundaries. Then, after the invention of movies, he’d\u00a0describe time as something like a movie reel that could be run backward\u00a0into the past and forward into the future, like H.G. Wells’ brand-new\u00a0Time Machine. It was natural, then, that people would see newspaper\u00a0comic strips as analogs of movies-as “paper movies.” We accepted that\u00a0conception of time as real because we could easily visualize it, correct\u00a0or not. But movies don’t report reality, they represent it. We can’t run\u00a0life backwards and forwards like a reel of film in a movie projector.<\/p>\n

We’re part of the universe, and the universe is a part of us. Somehow or\u00a0another, like waves and particles in physics, comic book stories combine\u00a0a serial view of time with another view – a hologram that embraces\u00a0everything, from a “full-length portrait of the authors universe” to “a\u00a0detail from the portrait.”<\/p>\n

It’s a matter of time. The thing about both newspaper strips and comic\u00a0book stories that differentiates them from other forms of pictorial\u00a0storytelling, is their conception of time. When you put a border around\u00a0a comic book illustration, it becomes a new universe. And that frame\u00a0contains all of the conventions of the comic book story within it. If,\u00a0say, you take all the borders off a Hal Foster “Prince Valiant,”\u00a0something goes wrong. And if you put frames around the pictures in a New\u00a0Yorker spot cartoon spread, that seems equally wrong. Why?<\/p>\n

“Prince Valiant” which used no word balloons or sound effects, but it’s\u00a0clearly a comic strip. It has the frame around its panels. Occasionally\u00a0Foster uses the vignette without the frame, but it’s understood to be\u00a0there. Within those frames is another universe, complete in itself, like\u00a0an equation. However, “before-and-after” is good enough for a cartoon\u00a0spread.<\/p>\n

A panel may represent any amount of time. I remember a lecture given by\u00a0Burne Hogarth, who drew the Sunday “Tarzan” strip and taught drawing and\u00a0anatomy. He showed one panel from his Sunday “Tarzan,” and explained how\u00a0that single panel represented 15 minutes. And it did. He had crammed 15\u00a0minutes of time into this one panel. His inspiration was Michelangelo\u00a0and the Renaissance artists.<\/p>\n

If you look at photos of the Sistine Chapel you can see that\u00a0Michelangelo’s use of the idea of painting a picture in time. And Jack\u00a0Kirby’s Silver Surfer may have had his origin in a panel of the Last\u00a0Judgement. The figure is in extreme perspective, so that as your eye\u00a0tracks from the back of a panel to the foreground it gives a sense of\u00a0dynamic movement. The seemingly broad exaggerations that people see in\u00a0Jack’s work are Jack’s way of telling a story in time. Instead of having\u00a0a dozen little frames, as Krigstein might, he would have one large and\u00a0powerful frame containing the same information.<\/p>\n

But the thing about the so-called “still” picture is that it isn’t\u00a0still. The nearest thing you can find is that represents a still picture\u00a0is a terrific blur. We live in a world of blurs. The whole universe is\u00a0moving at incredible speed, in every direction. But we’ve so accustomed\u00a0ourselves to the blurs, to the selective seeing, that we don’t see them.\u00a0They merely provide fodder for comic book critics, along with the sound\u00a0effects, thought balloons, and the rest of the conventions. Jack knew\u00a0this, and he drew the blurs.<\/p>\n

You take a picture of somebody, even with a good camera and they can be\u00a0alive and dead in the same photograph because the camera hasn’t stopped\u00a0time, it hasn’t slowed down the bullet, it has just made reality a\u00a0little less blurry. If you’ve seen photographs of insects that are taken\u00a0by electronic microscopes you see them in extraordinary detail because\u00a0you are seeing them almost completely frozen in time, close to absolute\u00a0zero. Truly “still.” they look unreal, alien.<\/p>\n

The impressionists re-saw the way we looked at things. Van Gogh’s\u00a0“Starry Night,” was painted while he was in a mental hospital, true\u00a0enough, but consciously or unconsciously, Van Gogh was painting a\u00a0picture of the blazing Einsteinian universe – before Einstein.<\/p>\n

The graphic novel has the potential to re-examine the world and see it\u00a0on fresh terms. You do that by seeing something other than a river\u00a0flowing by. There is something else that time is. It’s doing something\u00a0sequentially and not sequentially at the same time. In Eastern\u00a0philosophy, there is a sense of the world being a gestalt, that it’s all\u00a0happening everywhere, all at once, right now. There isn’t a past,\u00a0present or future, There is now. The conception of time is seen as an\u00a0artifice.<\/p>\n

But you asked about “sequential.” I think Eisner successfully applied\u00a0this sequential terminology to his own work, the post-“Spirit” stuff\u00a0when he started doing his self-described “graphic novels.” But the\u00a0sequential universe is entirely cause-and-effect, before-and-after. It\u00a0doesn’t see the other side of anything. You need enough pages to do that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0With graphic novels, do you think they need to be a minimum number of\u00a0pages?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: They need enough to fully exploit a complex storyline. If it’s just\u00a0an incident of something of that kind, no matter how long it is, it’s\u00a0still not a novel.<\/p>\n

There are short graphic stories that have done it – Steranko’s “At the\u00a0Stroke of Midnight,” Krigstein’s “The Master Race,” Metzger’s “M\u00f6bius\u00a0Tripp,” and work by Cole and Kurtzman and others – so it clearly can be\u00a0done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0Nowadays, it seems the graphic novel term applies to the physical\u00a0format. They really don’t care about the content. Do you agree with how\u00a0the term has evolved over the years?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: Probably not. As near as I can tell, the term is made to describe\u00a0something thick that has some sort of pictorial narrative. But if you\u00a0notice, people-including the news media-also confuse matters with\u00a0straight novels. They’ll still describe, say, a non-fiction book by a\u00a0well-known non-fiction writer as a “novel”-either because it’s thick or\u00a0because all thick books are novels. Or because all bestselling books are\u00a0novels. Or something. But some genuine graphic novels are being done, I\u00a0think, and that’s what counts. It’s always that way in the arts.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0I’m not sure if you are aware of some thicker books that were\u00a0published prior to George Metzger’s Beyond Time and Again–Lynd Ward’s\u00a0novels-in-woodcuts, Obadiah Oldbuck by Rodolphe T\u00f6pffer, Milt Gross’ He\u00a0Done Her Wrong. Dell did a couple of paperbacks that were all comics and\u00a0St. John published another, The Case of the Winking Buddha. Have you\u00a0seen any of those things?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: I don’t know anything about Obadiah Oldbuck. Lynd Ward’s books are\u00a0novels-in-wood-cuts, pantomimes on paper, one picture to a page,\u00a0wordless, soundless, with time presented as simple before-and-after.\u00a0They are fine books, but they’re not comics. Some interesting\u00a0novels-in-woodcuts were also done in France during the ’30s.<\/p>\n

In the case of the novels-in-woodcuts there is no delineation of time\u00a0except before-and-after, and very little of that. So, although I enjoy\u00a0them, they don’t deal with time satisfactorily.<\/p>\n

As for the paperback-size comic books, I thought they were pretty lame,\u00a0with disappointing breakdown. I read a couple of them. The writing was\u00a0pretty poor. They were over the top, caricatures of private eye novels\u00a0with smart-ass remarks and that kind of stuff. But none of them were\u00a0labeled graphic novels. The publishers called them comic novels or\u00a0something.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0Would this be The Case of the Winking Buddha that St. John put out?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: I don’t know. Probably another one. There were three or four\u00a0different companies. I never thought they were serious works. It was\u00a0kinda like doing a deliberately lame motion picture. A near-inadvertent\u00a0“Airplane.”<\/p>\n

In any case they weren’t called “graphic novels” which is what the\u00a0argument seems to be about. So the answer is that there may have been\u00a0comic book stories that people might have called “graphic novels”- but\u00a0they weren’t labeled that on the book itself. Which could be true of a\u00a0lot of the stuff like that Milt Gross book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0He Done Her Wrong?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: Yeah, that was a parody – a funny one, I recall – of the woodcut\u00a0novels, which was very popular at the time. It was a spoof.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0What do you consider to be the first graphic novel? There are a number\u00a0of claims to the first one.<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: The only thing I’ve ever said was that Denis Wheary and I – he was\u00a0my partner in publishing George Metzger’s Beyond Time and Again –\u00a0published the first book labeled a “graphic novel.” It was a hardback,\u00a0bound in blue cloth, with silver stamping. The term “graphic novel”\u00a0appears on the dust jacket copy and the title page.<\/p>\n

You can call things anything, however. In Eisner’s case, he called a\u00a0collection of short stories a graphic novel. But before he did that, Joe\u00a0Orlando who had access to Bill Spicer’s Graphic Story Magazine, where\u00a0there was a discussion of graphic novels, used the term on a romance\u00a0comic. [Jamie’s Note: Sinister House of Secret Love #2 (1972) was called\u00a0a “graphic novel”].<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0For a while there Eisner was saying he had created the term and that\u00a0he even published the first one, but he would correct this towards the\u00a0end of his career.<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: At that point I hadn’t paid much attention to inside-comics for\u00a0several years. But there was an article in the local Los Angeles Times.\u00a0They used the term with Eisner’s name on it, and it was obvious that\u00a0they were working from material supplied by DC Comics. I wrote letter to\u00a0DC and included a copy of Metzger’s book, published two years before\u00a0Eisner used it. They talked to Eisner and Eisner ran a quote about\u00a0having come up with the term independently, which is not implausible.<\/p>\n

However, he also used the term “graphic storytelling” which isn’t the\u00a0best coinage I ever made but it was mine. Then Eisner then came up with\u00a0a book title Graphic Storytelling and there were some other things. It\u00a0was clear that whether consciously or subconsciously, directly or\u00a0indirectly, Eisner picked up the title from our reviews of “The Spirit”\u00a0in Graphic Story Magazine.<\/p>\n

In the beginning I didn’t make any effort to identify myself with the\u00a0creation of the term. I was certain that the pros, being what they are,\u00a0pros, weren’t going to take suggestions from some fan in the jillikins.\u00a0That turned out to be the case, and when Eisner began producing his\u00a0collections and calling them “graphic novels,” well, then, the\u00a0professionals had finally spoken. I only made an issue of it when Eisner\u00a0began to lay claim to the term. If it was important enough for Eisner,\u00a0then it was important enough for me. Eisner had read my reviews of his\u00a0work. He knew me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0I believe they’ve just discovered some letters between Eisner and Jack\u00a0Katz where Katz was talking about The First Kingdom as a graphic novel,\u00a0this was before Eisner even started A Contract With God so some people\u00a0think he might have picked it up from there.<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: He could have. But Beyond Time and Again was the first book labeled\u00a0a graphic novel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0With Metzger’s Beyond Time and Again, you said you published over a\u00a0thousand of them?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: A hair over or under 1,000 copies. Somewhere in that range. The\u00a0records are packed away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0Do you recall the markets it was sold in? Was it in both what would be\u00a0become the direct market and in bookstores as well?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: No. Remember there was no direct market. And the regular bookstores\u00a0regarded every kind of comics except Disney reprints as something out of\u00a0a sewer. We sold a lot of books pre-publication. We sold them retail at\u00a0conventions. And to large dealer-wholesalers like Bud Plant and Bob\u00a0Sidebottom. We sold a lot of copies at my own bookstore. And through my\u00a0Graphic Story World \/ Wonderworld magazine, which had a circulation of\u00a0almost 3,000-a big circulation before the direct market.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>: Over the years the term “trade paperback” has become interchangeable\u00a0with the word “graphic novel.” Do you know how that came about?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: I don’t know. I haven’t been in touch with inside-comics stuff\u00a0since I closed my bookstore. But I imagine they borrowed the term from\u00a0mainstream publishing-mainly to avoid calling them some fan name, I\u00a0expect. However, the thin and flat 8 \u00bd x 11 format doesn’t really lend\u00a0itself to commercial success-it resists bookstore display. It’s too\u00a0tall. It doesn’t shelve well. It doesn’t “show spine” at all well. We’ll\u00a0see. People seem to like saying “graphic novel.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0 Jim Steranko did a book called Chandler: Red Tide and people consider\u00a0it a proto-graphic novel because there was a lot of text and some panels\u00a0with some word balloons. Do you consider a book like that to be a\u00a0graphic novel?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: I’ve only read the original book and Jim was dissatisfied with\u00a0that. He seems to feel much happier about this one. I’ll have to see\u00a0what the new Red Tide looks like to make any judgment. I’m looking\u00a0forward to it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>:\u00a0 Okay, with the term “graphic novel,” some people feel the term\u00a0diminishes comic books. Was that the intention?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: No. I’ve never had anything against comic books. I read ’em.<\/p>\n

My objection is that comic book publishers have seldom published\u00a0anything for grown-ups. And when they do, they try to hide it. If adults\u00a0want to read comic books mainly directed towards much younger people,\u00a0fine. In fact, of course they do. And among text novels, Treasure Island\u00a0is a favorite of mine, and Tom Sawyer, and there are a whole slew of\u00a0children’s books are among my favorites, not just comic books.<\/p>\n

My argument is quite simple. If you want to reach a five-year-old child,\u00a0you publish five-year-old child stories. If you want to reach\u00a0ten-year-old children, then you publish stories a ten-year-old would be\u00a0interested in, and so on. If you want to sell to a thirty-year-old or an\u00a0eighty-year-old then you publish a book that a thirty-year-old or an\u00a0eighty-year-old would want to read. It seems simple. But, no.<\/p>\n

Most comic book publishers will tell you they’re not in it for the art,\u00a0they’re in it for the money. Well, if they’re in it for the money, then\u00a0why don’t they test the market, so they can make more money? Why don’t\u00a0they find out if they can sell something to sixteen-year-olds in\u00a0addition to the fourteen-year-olds that they already have? And so on.<\/p>\n

And if they are only interested in the money, then why don’t they go\u00a0where the money is-to young adults with a lot of disposable income?\u00a0There is something wrong with the comic book “industry.”<\/p>\n

For a time, Marvel was so successful they could have easily have tested\u00a0the market with a good-looking, magazine-size, graphic story magazine of\u00a0at least 100 pages of new stories, in full color and priced right for an\u00a0older, more affluent, audience-a good solid magazine that published in\u00a0the same issue every month, on a running basis Smith’s or Buscema’s\u00a0“Conan,” Archie Goodwin’s and Gene Colan’s “Dracula,” the\u00a0Englehart\/Starlin “Master of Kung Fu,” and Jim Steranko’s great\u00a0“SHIELD,” which was always too sophisticated for little kids but a hit\u00a0with adults.<\/p>\n

They didn’t. And it’s strange, because Marvel did publish the next thing\u00a0to it, the first issue of the Savage Sword of Conan, 8 \u00bd x 11, in full\u00a0process color, and it sold out and had to be reprinted. But they never\u00a0did it again. The rest of the industry did no better – except for one\u00a0shining moment-when Dick Giordano gave the go ahead for The Dark Knight\u00a0Returns and The Watchmen books. Heavy Metal has always been too esoteric\u00a0for a general audience. Marvel’s Epic was simply lame.<\/p>\n

And then look at the case of The Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns.\u00a0They came out, they were a huge success, they made an unbelievable\u00a0amount of money. It may have saved DC Comics from just being folded up\u00a0and written off. And what did DC do? They got in a silly argument about\u00a0censorship with Frank Miller and Alan Moore, the creators of all that\u00a0money-and the guys who had made a great success with a new format. So\u00a0Miller and Moore quit and went to other companies, more or less\u00a0permanently. It’s just dumbness, it’s incredible that these people could\u00a0have been so foolish. Many years have passed, but I don’t know of\u00a0anything dumber in the business.<\/p>\n

DC couldn’t experiment intelligently. They came out with tabloid-sized\u00a0comic books in a brand-new format. You remember ’em? And what did they\u00a0put in them? Reprints. I recall standing in a line at a grocery store,\u00a0and they had the tabloid-sized comics displayed by the cash register.\u00a0There were two guys behind me. One of them said, “Hey, Tarzan!” and the\u00a0other said, “Forget it. It’s just a reprint.”<\/p>\n

And on top of that, because of the format DC was using, they couldn’t\u00a0publish the complete original comic book story. So they dropped four\u00a0pages or so. Instead of offering more, they offered less. What a way to\u00a0promote a new format. Then they came out with Action Comics Weekly, a\u00a0sure disaster from 3000 miles away. It was, I suppose, DC’s idea of\u00a0testing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie<\/strong>: Any last words, Richard?<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle<\/strong>: Yes. The idea of the graphic novel, and the graphic novel itself,\u00a0did not originate with the professional comic book writers or the\u00a0professional comic book artists or the professional comic book editors\u00a0or the professional comic book publishers – it originated from the\u00a0demand by comic book fans themselves for grown-up comic book stories.<\/p>\n

And even though many years have passed, every comics fan should remember\u00a0the industry’s folly, because it is waiting to happen again.<\/p>\n

The iPad Plus is on the way.<\/p>\n

Richard Kyle also supplied us with his theory on comics titled “The\u00a0Graphic Narrative.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From about 1998 to 2012 I did interviews off and on for CollectorTimes.com under the column name Coville’s Clubhouse. The website stopped updating in 2014 and has since gone off line. I’ll be reposting my interviews here one at a time in no particular order and in some cases be talking a bit about the interview. This one is\u00a0was published […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,13,61,36,34,14,32,100],"tags":[5,102],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collectortimes","category-comics","category-conventions","category-creators","category-dc","category-graphic-novels","category-history","category-interview","tag-graphic-novels","tag-richard-kyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}