Some notes on Comics, Graphic Novel and the Short-Story Composite

Comics are “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” (Scott McCoud, Understanding Comics, 1994)

Richard F. Outcault, the yellow kid, 1896-1898

Will Eisner’s definition of the graphic novel: a sequence of pictures arranged to tell a story (“Theory Comics and Sequential Art”, 1985)

  

Rolf Lundén, The United Stories of America: Studies in the Short-Story Composite (1999)

“Specific to the short story composite is the tension between openness and closure. To generalize, one may claim that the composite is an open work consisting of closed stories (…) the resolution and completeness of each autonomous story is the basic strategy in the creation of openness in the totality of the work.” (60)