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The authors argue that Dave McKean's art breaks from standard conventions of genre and in doing so transcends their limitations. Panaou and Michaelides analyze several of his books and convincingly portray Dave McKean as an innovative groundbreaker who produces extraordinary visual stories.
Stephen Weiner (2001) defines the graphic novel as "a story told in comic book format with a beginning, middle, and end." Weiner dates the use of the term graphic novel to the publication of A Contract with God: And Other Tenement Stories by Will Eisner in 1978. Eisner himself, in his seminal work, Comics and Sequential Art (1985), implies that the graphic novel is inherendy avant-garde, since it breaks from a tradition of comics being "confined to short narrations or depictions of episodes of brief but intense duration" (p. 141). This is why the first attempts of publishing and promoting graphic novels ran "headlong into an unprepared audience" (p. 141). The graphic novel's audience has, of course, increased since 1978.
But this is not the only thing that has changed ever since. In the same text quoted above, Eisner had also pointed to certain limitations of the graphic novel genre:
1. In being specific, images obviate interpretation.
2. Converting a textual passage into a visual image in the mind, rather than viewing a printed version of the image, permits a more participatory involvement.
3. Within the comic book art, there is little time and space to deal with abstract ideas or emotions, such as "the surge of pain or the glow of love or the turmoil of inner conflicts" (p.140).
Eisner concludes his discussion of the medium's limitations and challenges as follows:
Yet it is precisely in these areas where the opportunity for expansion of the application of comic book art lies. This is the prime and continuous confrontation which the comic book cartoonist must address. There are only two ways to deal with it: to try, and risk failure, or not to do it at all- that is, to avoid any subject not easily expressed by the present state of the art or its existing clichés (p. 140).
Breaking away from conventions and transcending limitations
Dave McKean evidendy opted for the first way, risking failure but succeeding to produce extraordinary visual...