Comic Books or Graphic Novels
For our fourth AABS event, author N.C. Christopher Couch delivered the talk “Comic Books or Graphic Novels? The Politics of Nomenclature” in the TDAR classroom. The author of numerous books and articles on Latin American art and on comic art, including The Will Eisner Companion: The Pioneering Spirit of the Father of the Graphic Novel (with Stephen Weiner), Will Eisner: A Retrospective (with Peter Myer), Faces of Eternity: Masks of the Pre-Columbian Americas, and The Festival Cycle of the Aztec Codex Borbonicus, Couch also holds the prestigious honor of having been James and Oliver’s professor at Haverford College.
Couch’s talk was the most “straightforward” academic lecture of the residency, tracing the history of the term “comic book” while questioning the medium’s supposed acceptance within the academy under the moniker of the “graphic novel.”
