From Hal Johnson:
I want to find the first American graphic novel—I say American simply because I know very little about comics of other countries; so put down your Tintins and your ACK hardbacks, and let’s see where this leads us.
Hal first has to define what a “graphic novel” is:
Graphic novel is a terrible term. It is never used with any kind of precision. The three graphic novels most non-nerds are likely to have encountered are Maus, Persepolis, and Fun Home, none of which are novels (being memoirs). Somehow Harvey Pekar’s Our Cancer Year and Joe Sacco’s Palestine and John Lewis’s March and Derf’s Kent State are all graphic novels despite their non-fiction credentials. Adrian Tomine’s 32 Stories and Gilbert Hernandez’s Fear of Comics are graphic novels despite being quite explicitly collections of short stories…
He starts by discounting some popular candidates:
The first book to call itself a graphic novel is Will Eisner’s A Contract with God (1978); it’s not a graphic novel, though, at least not in the sense of being a novel. It’s a short story collection. It’s not a genre short story collection, though, and that was unusual at the time. But still not a novel. Also 1978 is going to be a hard sell for first of anything.
So let’s look back; all the way back. The first comic printed in America is The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, which appeared as a newspaper supplement in 1841 and a book in 1849. At eighty pages of continuous picaresque story,1 it’s certainly a novel. But it is immediately disqualified for not being American. It’s an unlicensed ripoff of an unlicensed British ripoff of a Swiss comic by Rodolphe Töpffer! You can’t just make your Eurocomics American through translation and crime!
Mr. Johnson goes through a process of elimination to decide to his satisfaction the first American graphic novel.
So what is it?
Journey to the Gold Diggins, by Jeremiah Saddlebags by James A. and Donald F. Read (1849)
The Rev. Mr. Sourball’s European Tour: The Recreations of a City Parson by Horace Cope (1867)
The Brownies by Palmer Cox (1887)
A Story without Words; or, The New Regime in the United States by William E. Arnold (1894).
Willie and His Papa and the Rest of the Family by Frederick Opper (1901)
Buster Brown and His Resolutions by R.F. Outcault (1903)
Between Shots by Percy Crosby (1919)
Moon Mullins by Frank Willard (1927)
Wally’s Gang #91 by Frank Johnson (1928)
God’s Man by Lynd Ward (1929)
She Done Him Wrong by Milt Gross (1930)
Four Immigrants by Yoshitaka Henry Kiyama (1931)
It Rhymes with Lust by Drake Waller, Matt Baker, and Ray Orsin (1950)
From Hal Johnson’s Substack is a determination of the first American graphic novel.
Classics Illustrated?
Are the CliffNotes or SparkNotes versions of Frankenstein novels?
I worked in aviation-related print and video for most of my career. Two of us (the other was a PR guy) constantly had to correct other writers and on-air hosts when they wrote/said “aerobatic pilots.” The correct term is “aerobatics pilots,” because they fly aerobatics, with an “s.”
I cringe every time I see the term “graphic novel.”
I can’t help but think: Does it contain graphic sex? Graphic violence?
I’ve always felt the term should be “graphics novel.”
>sigh <
But I guess it's far too late for that.
The first to call itself a graphic novel was George Metzger’s Between Time and Again (1976). It helped that the publisher had created the term, and had published Graphic Story Magazine. Been awhile since I read it, so I can neither confirm nor deny its novel status.
Before there was graphic novels, there was pulps.
What an absolutely superb essay. Learned and yet very readable. I’m a new fan of this fellow. Why can’t we have more of this sort of writing about 19th century comics; most is gawdawful impenetrable navel-gazing academese.
Oh, wow, thank you!
If you end up picking up one of my books, let me know and I’ll send you an autographed original sketch on an index card, suitable for pasting in as a book plate.