The Graphic Novel and "Ghost World"

It is said that "an image worth more than 1000 words", and, in fact, I actually believe they do, due to the fact that they are engaging, attractive and with only one image you can express and say a lot. Moreover, an image can stand on its own or be accompanied by text, which is the case of the graphic novel. This genre is simply defined as a book-length comics that at times can narrate an only and continuous story from the beginning to the end, and in some other occasions, a graphic novel, can be a collection of some others short stories. 

Everything started with short comics that were written long time ago, but they only were spread when the newspaper industry arised in the late nineteenth century. So, comics have evolved to small sections in the newspaper to magazines completely dedicated to comics and superheroes stories, and then finally to book-length stories and collections of comics previously published. The first graphic novel was "A Contract with God and other Tenement Stories" by Will Eisner published in 1978. Afterwards, a lot of artists started working on comics at places like Marvel and some of the most well known graphic novels are Maus by Art Spiegelman (1986), Watchmen by Alan Moore (1986), Sandman by Neil Gaiman (1990), Ghost World by Daniel Clowes (1997) and Batman: the dark knight returns (1986)   

I wasn't very into graphic novels, honestly, but after covering this topic during the class, I've realized that it's a highly artistic genre because of the mixture and combination of both images and text as a whole, in fact, comics are considered to be sequential visual art. Consequently, a graphic novel tends to emphasize on striking visuals, the character evolution and also colors, having as most frequent topics drama, adventures, politics, among others and although the majority of the graphic novels share these features, I find something that caught my attention in the novel written by Daniel Clowes, Ghost World. 

But, what makes Daniel Clowes' Ghost World special and different from the others? Well, this graphic novel was firstly serialized in the indie comic called Eightball from 1993 to 1997 and it has eight chapters that have to do with the lives of two girls. However, what makes this graphic novel so appealing and interesting is that although it follows the pattern of the black and with images of the indie comics, Clowes adds a pale blue wash that has a twofold interpretation. The first one has to do with giving a  impression that is the reflected on the characters of the novel, and the second interpretation is to do with the idea of the fall or sunset which is represented in the novel by the topic of change. Furthermore, other feature that makes it different is the fact that, albeit the genre is mainly dominated by men and also male characters (which means that women were not plot devices, but secondary characters), Daniel Clowes set in his novel female main characters, Enid and Rebbeca. Finally, the other issue that makes this novel special is the fact that deals with growing older and  the resistance of growing up of the main character, meaning that this theme addresses teenagers but at the same time gives the chance of making thought-provoking questions since the topics covered in the novel are well developed and universal, for example, relationships, divorce, relation between father and daughter, among others. 

In a nutshell, I really like this novel not only because it is kind of actual the novel and the theme taking into consideration that was written in 1997, but also that it breaks with some of the standards of the genre of graphic novels, giving women an important role within the novel as the main characters.