Brown’s alumni magazine profiles First Second Books publisher Mark Siegel and his wife, author Siena Cherson Siegel, who collaborated on To Dance: A Ballerina’s Graphic Novel.
If you’re unfamiliar with graphic novels, they can take a bit of getting used to. At first, you can feel as if you’re reading a comic book, but the experience soon takes on a more nuanced feel. The words comment on the pictures, and the pictures on the words; it’s this interplay that gives rise to an entirely different kind of reading experience. “There’s just this incredible level of subtext in a graphic novel,” says Mark Siegel. “There’s this third voice somewhere halfway between pictures and words that’s doing the storytelling.”
To Dance will be published by Simon & Schuster next month.
September 12th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
“If you’re unfamiliar with graphic novels, they can take a bit of getting used to. At first, you can feel as if you’re reading a comic book, but the experience soon takes on a more nuanced feel.”
Those two sentences make me want to poke my eyes out. It’s all comics, just like Hollywood Wives is a novel and Ulysses is a novel.
September 12th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Not true! Their work is IMPORTANT ART and the other stuff is GREASY KID’S STUFF.
Yeah, that false distinction gets my hackles up, too.
September 12th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Yes, I didn’t realize that the distinction between “comic book” and “graphic novel” was one of literary quality and not, say, FORMAT.
Yeesh. That’s annoying.
September 12th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Oh man, I can’t believe graphic novels aren’t comics! I always throw anything I think might be a comic book on the ground and run away. Now I’ll have to check first!
September 12th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
He was talking to academics, people, not comics-savvy folks like y’all. They need to hear this kind of #%&* to justify reading anything that’s not pretentious and overblown. The good news is that there are some academics who love comics and aren’t afraid to say the word. The bad news is that most of academia hasn’t reached that point yet. If you think what Mark said is bad, try reading The New York Times Book Review whenever it discusses comics - excuse me - graphic novels.
September 13th, 2006 at 8:07 am
As an academic, I think it’s important to speak up here… It’s not the academics who need these distinctions. Some of the best books about comics of all kinds that have been published recently were written by academics, and we love trash, yes we do. No, it’s the NPR listeners and New Yorker readers who need it. They aren’t so much academic as agonizingly and embarrassingly bourgeois.
September 13th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Exactly right, Dan. I am an academic, too. We make fun of stuff that is pretentious and overblown.
I consider Siegal’s comments a bit pretentious and overblown.
September 13th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Excuse me–Siegel, not “Siegal.”
September 15th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Hey there, and thanks for posting a link about TO DANCE! I haven’t done too much promoting for it, since it’s separate to First Second. Just so you know, I have trouble with that too. I do interviews and find all kinds of weird semi-paraphrased statements in quotes as though they were verbatim. As I’ve been traveling a lot for the First Second roadshow, it’s true I tailor my shpiel for different audiences, and speak a different jargon for educators, librarians, booksellers or readers. I am in the business of comics, I love comics, and I use GN, comics, or just plain book interchangeably. I don’t care much for semantic games, especially since the way the form has evolved, you could argue these various terms are ALL misnomers. Don’t you think? I agree, this sounds pretentious. Oh, well.
November 8th, 2006 at 1:02 am
I bought this book for a non-native English speaker and the girl loved it. This is a great tool for people who need to learn a language and want to do this in an entertaining way without feeling intimidated. The feed back I got was “treat story” and from the school “we should have these”. Thank you Mr. Siegel!