What is the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel/manga?
Just as their name states, graphic novels are ‘books in pictures’, with intricate plotlines and colorful characters. But while comics and graphic novels both tell their stories using a sequential art combination of text, panels, and images, graphic novels typically run longer than comic books, stretching out a story over one long volume or combined into several volumes. And instead of color print on glossy paper, manga runs black and white throughout the book. Manga often showcases adolescent heroes with whom young readers can identify. Shouldn’t tweens and young adults read “real books”? Graphic novels not only comprise one form of reading, storytelling, and entertainment, but they also communicate effectively in this hi-tech age, acting as a bridge between the image of a video screen and the printed text of a book. With as much emphasis placed on the art as on the story, readers enjoy not only getting to know the characters as they travel through an extended plot over the course of s
