Comics are an old art form whose basic qualities define the evolution of graphic novels, both as a medium and as a term. A combination of pictures and words, comics master Will Eisner claims that they appeared in ancient Egypt and Medieval Europe. More broadly, the term “comics” is drawn from the name for materials often printed in newspapers starting at the beginning of the twentieth century. Comics, or funny pages, were short pieces usually predicated on visual jokes and vaudeville style slapstick comedy.
Comic books, the stand-alone twenty four page pamphlets, began to grow as an industry in the late 1930s and quickly became something of a national phenomena. By 1948, it was estimated that fifty million comics were published per year on a wide range of topics. Criticism of the art form followed immediately. Psychologists like Frederic Wertham noted that child delinquents were often eager consumers of comics.
Comics were considered to be overwhelmingly violent media. Detractors would often count the individual panels in a comic book, then identify panels which were “violent” (including violent sound effects), and relate the relationship to aghast audiences. Kidd Colt, one book reviewed by Dr. Wertham, featured one hundred and eleven panels, sixty nine of which were images of violence, including “violent sound effects such as poww or thapp”.
Widespread fear of the industry percolated for years, as psychologists built symposiums and materials leveling every possible accusation against the popular content of comics books. Psychologist Gerson Legman accused comics of having “Naziist” and anti-Semitic content in his article written under Wertham’s symposium. Detroit Police Commissary Harry Toy accused the material of being “Communistic”. A Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Deliquency called upon Wertham several times to serve as an expert witness testifying to the dangers of the media for young readers.
Under pressure from the committee, comics publishers voluntarily created the Comics Code Authority. Banning violent imagery and even objecting to the inclusion of certain themes or subjects, such as zombies, the code served to tighten restrictions on comics. The years of bad publicity and the restrictive code also contributed to the low esteem in which comics were held.
It was against this bad press and the nonrepresentative language that forced creators like Eisner to reconsider the way in which their medium was considered by the press. That atmosphere lent itself to the evolution of terms to create the spiritual successors to the term “comic”–graphic novels.
“Graphic novel” is a relatively new name for a fairly old phenomena. Perhaps more familiar to the average library user would be the much older and much broader “comic” or “comic book”. 
The former term, although familiar, is too broad, describing the visual media as a whole regardless of its publication form–comics can be published as stand alone materials, serial strips in newspapers, digitally as webcomics. On the other hand, a “comic book” generally describes a very specific type of publication, the 24-48 page booklets traditionally sold out of specialist shops and news stands.
While pitching a collection of short stories done in sequential art style to a publisher, creator Will Eisner realized that it would be rejected if he described his material as a comic book; the more familiar term having negative connotations as the exclusive purview of juvenalia. Although comic book historians (one of whom is cited here, on Will Eisner’s legacy website) points out that there is evidence of the term predating Eisner’s usage by a decade, A Contract With God is generally credited as popularizing the phrase. D. Aviva Rothschild attributes the phrase’s coining and her subsequent usage exclusively to Eisner.
For this project, the Library of Congress subject heading derived in part of Rothschild’s project is perhaps the most expedient definition. As a broad, generalist definition, this describes any collection of original sequential art bound into a book, with the exception of newspaper style comic archives (which fall under the heading Comics, strips, etc). Initially the idea was to examine any apparent reluctance to include graphic novels into the broader selection of library materials, and then track the changes in policy that lead to graphic novel collections being developed. Unfortunately, the Library of Congress does not visibly publish any materials surrounding its decisions for new subject headings.
The initial problem with this desire was that graphic novels were not terribly common. Trade paperback collections, or story arc graphic albums (one of the more common types of graphic novel ) existed for years but were not issued consistently until the beginning of the twenty first century.
Collections advice and materials start to appear in mid 90s. Kat Kan’s column, Graphically Speaking, in the Voices Of Youth Advocacy bimonthly journal, appears to be the first column that regularly addresses graphic novels from a professional journal. Starting in 1994, she reviewed and advocated for graphic novels in libraries.
In December 1994, she reviews one nonfiction item–Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Although it is described as a trade comic and thus distinct from graphic novels, the distinction is not qualified outside the apparent preferences of the
In 2005, she became the first librarian to judge the Eisner Awards.
Bibliographic collections began in 1995 with with D. Aviva Rothschild’s landmark Graphic Novels: A Bibliographic Guide to Book-Length Comics. A dissertation on comics, her annotations are detailed, in-depth, and profoundly personablem, and her definition of graphic novel (used to limit the materials selected for her review and annotation) is cited in the Library Of Congress’s subject heading authority file. More recently, bibliographic collections have taken root in library-centric institutions. In 2005, the CCBC began a bibliographic list intended to serve library institutions as they started their own graphic novel collections.
Graphic Novel History 