With the recent string of successful comics-turned-movie projects, the mainstream press is starting to take notice of the comics industry, and specifically the growing graphic novel sector. The following is an excerpt from an Associated Press article posted on Friday, July 19, 2002.
From the Associated Press
by TODD DVORAK, Associated Press Writer
MUSCATINE, Iowa (AP) - For a time, the business of comic books seemed limited to tales of costumed superheros, gumshoe detectives or thwarted alien invasions, the clientele an assortment of adolescents, collectors and geeks.
But the industry stereotype is undergoing a transformation of sorts thanks to a longer, more literary comic offshoot called the graphic novel. Bolstered by comic writers and artists bent on telling more complex tales and by a string of Hollywood movies adapted from graphic novels — including the new "Road to Perdition" — publishers, booksellers and readers are beginning to take note.
"This is an art form that is every bit as valid for telling stories and entertaining people as movies or any other form," Max Allan Collins, author of "Road to Perdition," said in an interview from his home in this Mississippi River town. "The thing about it is that everybody understands the vocabulary of comics. ... The hope is that people who see and like the movie will be interested enough to begin to cross that perceived forbidden land into the world of comics and graphic novels," said Collins, who for 15 years wrote the Dick Tracy comic strip.
Cosmetically, the graphic novel resembles any other book on the shelf, covered with hardback or glossy trade paper, printed with standard paper and plastic-wrap free. Between the covers is another matter, though. In the 300-page "Road to Perdition," the black-and-white panels drawn by London-based cartoonist Richard Piers Rayner make visual the images and action of traditional literature...
