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Comic vs Graphic Novel
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04 July 2022
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Previously, we’ve talked about Webcomics vs Comics and hopefully you’ve determined what kind of entertainment that you like the most, or in what form do you want to publish your comics. Now, there’s one form of drawing art that looks similar, but different from comics. It’s called a graphic novel. Let’s put them head-to-head to see their differences:
Comics
Soldiers of God (hendoranto.near)
It’s a very common thing, especially for superhero and anime fans. Western audiences call it ‘comic’, but in Japan, manga has its own graphic storytelling with one long history. The unique style of manga dates all the way back to the 19th century and came into global popularity back in the 1950s following the end of World War II.
In Japan, a slew of publishers roll out new chapters of a manga on a weekly or monthly basis. In Western, they also did this in some comics, or even ended one chronical plot in one exact comic, and started another adventure for the next comic.
Some franchises like One Piece have more than 50 volumes to their name. Other manga titles may simply forego allotted chapters and choose to publish a comprehensive volume from the get-go.
Sometimes manga are printed in black-and-white, or the author creates small amounts of colorful pages to let the reader's imagination dive into that illustration. Comic features detailed characters and dialogue-centric narratives.
While comics in Western are drawn with colors and drawn in many different ways, it still has the same form with manga: a panel of illustrations that narrates the story.
There are lots of comics that you can read, especially here in Paras Comic. For example, Soldiers of God or Ozymandias.
Graphic Novel
The Art of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki
Graphic novels tend to be less familiar terms for some people, especially for non-Japanese fans, but the medium has much in common with manga. Although it uses graphic arts, it’s in a narrative form. In other words, it uses pictures to narrate a story, just like a film or TV series does. The novels are mostly geared towards young adult readers of both sexes though females gravitate towards the medium most often. As the name suggests, a graphic novel is just that; The story itself is rarely more than 50,000 words and is divided up by a slew of stunning illustrations.
Graphic novels are often confused with manga because of their sporadic pictures. Many graphic novels feature illustrations done in the style of traditional manga, and the publications mimic the art style on purpose.
Categorized by its slower pacing, graphic novels have more room to focus on narrative structure than manga. Readers can expect to see much more disposition and less dialogue in graphic novels. As for its artwork, the medium borrows heavily from manga, but graphic novels tend to have fewer fine details in its illustrations.
Some recommendations of graphic novels that you can read are Classroom of The Elite, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, and My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected.
So there you go, that’s the difference between comic and graphic novel! Do you think you like a book that’s rich with illustrations and dialogues, or an art with narration? You decide!
While we’re at it, if you choose comics as your main source of entertainment, you can access Paras Comic with the FREEMIUM feature. Click here to learn more and find your favorite comics here!
