As Steven Weiner notes, 1986 was a “turning point,” although not the revolutionary year many had hoped it would be. Some graphic novels are the product of a single writer, or a writer and illustrator team, but there are examples of collaborative works, such as the graphic novel series created by a collective of women called CLAMP. The format has gained popularity over the past 25 years in a variety of geographic and topical areas, including the expected superhero stories and adaptations, but also works of satire, non-fiction, memoirs, historical fiction, and a Japanese form called manga. Eisner, who began working in comics in 1936, has stated that he devised the term as a marketing technique to increase the chances that his illustrated series of interlinked short stories about working-class Jewish families during the Great Depression might be published. There is some debate about who coined the phrase, but one of the first graphic novels, if not the first, was Will Eisner’s Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories, published in 1978. Graphic novels grew out of the comic book movement in the 1960s and came into existence at the hands of writers who were looking to use the comic book format to address more mainstream or adult topics.
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