In Faster Than a Speeding Bullet,
Stephen Weiner provides a short history of graphic novels, from the start of
comic books up to recent works such as Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan and
Dan Clowes’ Ghost World.  The book is just 64 pages, and many of them
are illustrated with panels from comics and graphic novels, so it is light on
text.  Each of the 14 chapters is just a few pages long, Weiner says that the
first modern graphic novel was Will Eisner’s A Contract With God and Other
Tenement Stories.  He identifies Jules Feifer’s Tantrum as a
successor.  The work of Frank Miller on Daredevil and Alan Moore on Swamp
Thing were also important to the form, deepening it and giving it more
drama.  But it is Art Spiegelman’s 1986 work Maus that Weiner sees as
dramatically changing the field and making the graphic novel an artistic form
that needed to be taken seriously.  Wiener also describes Neil Gaiman’s Sandman
as influential.  Jeff Smith’s Bone is given a chapter to itself, which
might surprise some readers, but Weiner makes the case that it merits such
honor.  Another work that may be unfamiliar to many readers is Scott McCloud’s Understanding
Comics, which is a self-referential graphic novel about the genre. 

Weiner does not engage in any
profound literary analysis or make an effort to explain the artistic value or
psychological depth of graphic novels.  He pays more attention to the different
publishers and the awards that books have won.  The book will probably contain
some information that is new to even devoted graphic novel fans, and it also
probably leaves out works that devotees will believe important to the history
of the genre.  Nevertheless, this is a useful introduction that will be
especially interesting for those who have read one or two graphic novels and
want to know more. 

© 2004 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also
editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: ArtAndPhotography