The first use of the term “Graphic Novel” was seen in 1964 when it was coined by the writer Richard Kyle in his essay, “The Future of Comics”. But the first widely accepted graphic novel was a 1978 book, A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories by Will Eisner as he tried to bring a more sophisticated and adult twist to the comic format in the United States, which then in turn inspired the likes of Frank Miller and his incredible, The Dark Knight Returns in 1986 and Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Award-winning story, Maus in 1980. I could go on and mention the likes of Alan Moore with his Watchmen series or V for Vendetta. The point I’m trying to make is that graphic novels have been around for a long time; they were born from comics and used as tools to tell more hard-hitting and darker tales.
