![]() ![]() The ability to speak figuratively is one of the strongpoints of the graphic novelist, who has the freedom to invent his or her own rhetorical tricks and develop a new visual language with its own codes and meanings. For me the essential difference between the two lies in the use of metaphors. In 2004 I published a booklet about the graphic novel in which I - in alphabetical order - investigated "the unexplored territory between the literal and figurative".* Words and pictures unite to tell stories about all things under the sun, but in a classic comic (say, Hal Foster's Prince Valiant) this happens more straightforwardly and literally than in a drawn novel (for example Jacques Tardi's It Was the War of the Trenches). ![]() There is no rock-hard boundary between the two, at most a sliding scale running from generic and genre-specific to authentic and author-specific. Looking back over the past thirty years, if I had to say what has been the dominant factor in it for me, it would be: the comic book or, more precise, the graphic novel. Indeed: who decides what the basic necessities of life are? I have friends who would wither away like neglected houseplants without a regular dose of soccer. ![]() ![]() A roof and a stove in winter, sunblockers and cocktails in summertime. Nobody, I guess, not like we need water and bread, love and safety. ![]()
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