Dickens and Dostoyevsky serialised a lot of their novels, and they still stand as whole works. So the same should stand for serialised comics.

Corben's Bloodstar, which was also published in 1976, calls itself a graphic novel on the inner flap of the dustjacket. The term Graphic novel must have been in the air that year :)

He owns a signed first edition of A Contract with God?! Good *choke*Lord!

"What we learned today is the best salesman gets the credit." - Eddy P sharp as always. :)

The First Kingdom by Jack Katz is another early graphic novel.

For Beyond Time and Again I’m guessing that the Kyle in the publisher’s name is Richard Kyle who owned a comics store here in Long Beach, and he had come out of the fan press scene here in California. Jack Kirby shopped at his store, and Kyle commissioned and published Kirby’s Street Code.

That Metzger novel looks nice. Great vid!

2:16 So casual, so not a big deal... "first edition signed by Will Eisner". Epic. Such an awesome collection. Thanks for the lecture guys!

"Cream paper and sepia ink, so ya know it's high falutin'" I treasure this channel

The publisher of the Geo. Metzger book was Richard Kyle, who is regarded as one of the founders of comics fandom and the guy who first coined the term "graphic novel" in fanzines. He also was among the first comics shop owners in the US. Also ... why no love for Steranko's Chandler, which he'll tell you was the first graphic novel, even though he used "An Illustrated Novel" on the book. Same treatment as Kane's Blackmark .... text with comic book like illustrations. Also, Chandler is in color, all the books you showed were essentially black and white, except Barbarella. Eisner was just smart enough to use the term graphic novel in describing his book.

Didn't BLOODSTAR, illustrated by Richard Corben come out a couple of years BEFORE that Eisner book?

Seeing "Die Idee" and "Madman's Drum" covers shows where Seth gets his cover lettering from.

Kurtzman's Jungle book is also a collection of short stories.

You mentioned Valerian; Cinebook published those collections in English if you're interested. English-language translations of European graphic albums are far more popular than American comics in some countries, including South Africa.

Massively interesting episode. Such depth of historical knowledge. Amazing varied art styles.

Probably one of your more important episodes when it comes to putting the graphic novel into proper historical perspective.

Yes, you should definitely do a Jules Feiffer episode!

what did you just do to my paycheck you monsters

Made me unshelve my copy of Dino Buzzati's Poem Strip (1969)

That William Gropper reference. I had to check it out. Incredible art! Thank you.

Please consider do a review on an Akira Toriyama work. Your videos are awesome, I'm learning a lot as a comic cartoonist too.

The BLACKMARK reminds me of a Byron Preiss thing too. He did a bunch of "illustrated novels" that followed that format. Great history lesson with this episode!

Fantastic overview and I appreciate the depth of insight you all provide. It was also great to see most of these books in their original editions and formats. Warren is always an excellent addition to the Kayfabe crew!

EXCELLENT!!!! This show just gets better and better.

Just another home run of an episode! Well done! So many books that pre-dated "Contract with God"! I somehow came across "Tantrum" in my small town library; I was about 15 and it blew my little mind! A book length comics story! Wow! I later bought Fantagraphics' reprint edition. Fantagraphics also came out with reprints of the Milt Gross book, and Blackmark. Dover Books has the Lynd Ward books. And New York Review Comics put out Gropper's Alley-Oop not long ago. So many of these won't be hard to find in reprint editions!

Great overview! Thanks as always for the inspiring conversations on your episodes. I had the pleasure of meeting George Metzger at a comic festival a few years back and we had a wonderful conversation (or as he said, "sling the shit around") about comics and manga. I think this was just before Fantagraphics released Beyond Time and Again but he said he had to dig out the original pages of the graphic novel from a box in his garage so they could be scanned/photographed. Incredible work from a genuinely cool gentleman! Thanks again

Un Semaine d'Bonte (1934) is probably not going to make the cut, but it's at least in the tradition of Die Idee. Chabon included a mention of Max Ernst in Kavalier in Clay, (appearing at a party).

So, why exactly is "A contract with god" considered the first graphic novel?

This episode was fascinating. Love this dive into graphic novel history. Thank you for sharing it with us!

Added a few of these to the shopping cart. Thanks boys!

Tantrum is a masterpiece! Thanks for another great episode.

Fantastic video, as always. As a fan of the medium I especially like silent graphic novels and Masereel and Ward are some of my favourites (even if their work does not include the typical comic book characteristics). Great joy to see all the fine editions in this video. 🥰👍

What a wonderful display; we live in a society (cough cough) where all of these formats are more possible to creators and the comics format is more fluid than ever. Before Marvel co-opted and rendered meaningless the term "graphic novel", Richard Kyle (who coined the term and co-published the Metzger book) was a part of fanzine discussions that proposed more elevated and evocative content that would deserve a more deluxe format, as opposed to just the package that became a marketing device. I'd like to see you guys do a series that looks at comics that try to expand into other shapes, both visually and verbally. There are tons of comics variations we haven't seen in the US that show untapped possibilities. But damn this was a great way to start.

Really a great episode. Thanks for doing this, gents.

Another great video guys, was not familiar with the Milt Gross or Metzger books. And yes, manga definitely needs to be part of this conversation, I think Tezuka published a proto graphic novel back in the 40s or so, a self-contained, unserialized book.

I didn't know Masereel did 'The Idea'! In 1932, one Berthold Bartosch did an animated feature that bore the same name, a fascinating picture which is also very much avant-garde -it has one of the first electronic scores put on film- I wasn't aware it was a Masereel wordless novel first, although on hindsight it makes total sense. That's the magick of Cartoonist Kayfabe each video offers something new to learn or a new perspective, anyways fascinating video as always! Keep on truckin'! Bartosch's 'The Idea', for anyone interested: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rZp5gLOdu9KsdIE.html

Great video, sad that many of these books are so hard to find at anything like a reasonable price. Guess they are the sort of thing if you see them for a fiver at a comic mart, pick them up as they won't probably turn up again or for a long while. Had, over the years, many of the ones displayed except the last one. Noticed that there was a Fantagraphics reprint but even that seems to be hard to get as well

Great special guest

Jules Feiffer is a real talent. He also wrote the play turned movie, Little Murders, which I feel contains four of the greatest monologues ever written. I saw him speak and introduce this picture at an NYC Film Forum screening, and he was incredibly charming, articulate, and charismatic.

So my teacher lied lol. This was a good episode

Seriously wonderful edition. The knowledge! 🙏

You guys ar3 the best I LOVE THIS ONE

the hands are the real stars of the show

Great episode!

Jim... 1986: Grand Design! That would be a great graphic novel!

More love for Milt Gross!

What about R. Crumb's The Yum Yum Book? It came out in 1975 predating both Eisner and Feiffer.

perhaps safe to say Jeff Smith might've been a Beyond Time and Again fan?

So glad you made this video. Among my many pet peeves related to comics is the overuse of the term graphic novel. It annoys me so much that everything is referred to as a GN simply because it's in a hardcover format. I see it so much specially when a property is being adapted to tv or movies. "This is based on the Walking Dead graphic novel" "An adaptation of The Boys graphic novel". Makes it sound like they're ashamed that they're basing something off of comics and want to give it a proper or highfalutin term.

George Metzger is the best! I had the pleasure of knowing him a bit when I lived in Vancouver. Fantagraphics Underground published a reprint of George's Beyond Time and Again in 2016. Folks should be able to track it down. :D

Just bought the regular Red Background variant of Red Room #1 for like $10 from my LCS, so I hope they don't suddenly drop all of the cool variants tomorrow... It was that, or they already had CGC 9.8 PRE-SALES of the Red Room #1 for $70! But I want to read the comic, so buying a slab seemed... I guess I could have spent $100 and bought a RAW copy to read and a 9.8 CGC Slab pre-sale as an investment? Are RED ROOM #1 CGC 9.8s going to be worth a FORTUNE in the future?

I always assumed the term *"graphic novel"* came out in the 80s. Consider me schooled.

Weren't he first graphic novels hieroglyphics? :)

u guys rule!

Boys.... stahp.

I was doing some research before watching this and the intro sounds like a slight variation of the pornhub theme