Editing Graphic novel (section)

=== Modern era ===
[[File:Blackmark.jpg|thumb|left|Detail from ''Blackmark'' (1971) by scripter [[Archie Goodwin (comics)|Archie Goodwin]] and [[artist]]-plotter [[Gil Kane]]]]
Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin's ''[[Blackmark]]'' (1971), a [[science fiction]]/[[sword-and-sorcery]] paperback published by [[Bantam Books]], did not use the term originally; the back-cover blurb of the 30th-anniversary edition ({{ISBN|978-1-56097-456-7}}) calls it, retroactively, the first American graphic novel. The [[Academy of Comic Book Arts]] presented Kane with a special 1971 [[Shazam Award]] for what it called "his paperback comics novel". Whatever the nomenclature, ''Blackmark'' is a 119-page story of comic-book art, with captions and [[word balloons]], published in a traditional book format.

European creators were also experimenting with the longer narrative in comics form. In the United Kingdom, [[Raymond Briggs]] was producing works such as ''[[Father Christmas (graphic novel)|Father Christmas]]'' (1972) and ''[[The Snowman (picture book)|The Snowman]]'' (1978), which he himself described as being from the "bottomless abyss of strip cartooning", although they, along with such other Briggs works as the more mature ''[[When the Wind Blows (graphic novel)|When the Wind Blows]]'' (1982), have been re-marketed as graphic novels in the wake of the term's popularity. Briggs noted, however, that he did not like that term too much.<ref>{{cite news|first=Wroe |last=Nicholas|title= Bloomin' Christmas |date=December 18, 2004 |work=[[The Guardian]]|location=UK |url= http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1375227,00.html|archive-date=April 5, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110405090127/http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/dec/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview8|url-status=live}}</ref>