WACO, Texas—Those hoping to get a jump on what's coming soon to movie theaters may want to swap watching movie trailers for a visit to the local comic book shop or bookstore to scope out the latest graphic novels.
The graphic novel, a slick, artistic and upscale cousin of the comic book, has emerged as a new player in printed media.
Graphic novels serve as rich source material for film producers looking for ready-to-visualize stories, and they're viewed as product extensions of comic book publishers, video game makers and television series.
An 8-foot bookcase, flanked by shelves of comic books in a corner of Bankston's Comic and Sports Cards sums up the trend. Scores of graphic novels pack the free-standing bookcase's four sides, and while the majority have roots in comic book series, there are more than a few titles that found their first expression as a graphic novel.
Brent Bankston, owner of Bankston's, says comic book giants DC Comics and Marvel Comics have roared into graphic novel territory in recent years, finding new customers willing to shell out $15 to $20 for stories told visually in book form, printed on higher-quality paper.
"Two to three years ago, we wouldn't have the amount of trades (trade paperbacks) that we do now," he said.
Where comic book publishers once feared the dwindling numbers of their core audience, young men who bought comics on a weekly basis, they're finding new life in compiling those weekly releases into book form, often called trade paperbacks.
Doing so has broadened their fan base, as adult men, soccer moms and fans of the artwork found graphic novels a better fit for their time-pressed lifestyles, Bankston said.
Longtime aficionados of the graphical storytelling found in Japanese comics, or manga, whose American fan base is rapidly expanding, and French and Belgian comics also are drifting over to English-language graphic novels.
Marvel Comics has compiled the back stories of the company's superheroes and reprinted them as black-and-white books in its "Essentials" series, which boasts more than 30 titles—a handy reference for those introduced to those heroes in their movie manifestations.
DC Comics has a "52 Weeks" series that combines a year's worth of comic book releases into a stand-alone volume.
"The question in the industry is how fast is too fast to go into book form," Bankston said.
Like film, graphic novels and comics are often collaborative processes, with writers teaming with artists and inkers. More than ever, those teams look at book-form novels as an end product to their efforts.
Movie producers, on the other hand, see graphic novels as a starting place for a film. Not only do many novels or comic series have built-in, loyal fan bases, but they also have their stories laid out visually, much like the storyboards that directors create to outline their films.
Last month's Comic-Con International, the annual convention of the comic books/graphic novel industry, drew 100,000 attendees to San Diego, and it's a safe bet there were more than a few movie producers and agents trolling for business.
While long-established comic book superheroes such as "Superman," "Batman," "Spider-Man" and the "X-Men" have translated into lucrative film franchises, such graphic novels as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," "From Hell," "Daniel Clowes' Ghost World," "American Splendor," "Frank Miller's Sin City" and "V For Vendetta" have also found their way to the silver screen.
Add to that the number of lesser-known comic book series with cultish followings, such as "Hellboy" and "Constantine"—both owing much in their look and style to graphic novels—and you see why Hollywood is shopping bookshelves.
Horror master Sam Raimi, for instance, is currently filming an adaptation of Steve Nile's graphic novel "30 Days Of Night"—a story of an Alaskan town besieged by vampires—as his next feature.
Historians of the form point to Will Eisner's 1978 "A Contract With God," a collection of four urban tales, as the forerunner of today's graphic novel. But two 1986 works proved landmarks in the genre.
Frank Miller's reimagining of Batman as a haunted and violent vigilante in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" led to a renaissance of that superhero, with director Tim Burton drawing heavily on Miller's interpretation for his films "Batman" (1989) and "Batman Returns" (1992).
Also in 1986, Art Spiegelman retold the stories of his family's Holocaust survivors, with humans recast as mice, cats and pigs, in "Maus, A Survivor's Tale," which not only became the best-selling graphic novel in history but also won a Pulitzer Prize.
The critical and commercial success of "Maus" led publishers, such as Random House, Houghton Mifflin and Hyperion, to add graphic novels to their catalogs.
While superheroes and the supernatural still drive many of the stories told in graphic novels, some real-world tales are using the format.
Harvey Pekar ("American Splendor") tells of his struggle with cancer in "Our Cancer Year," while Marjane Satrapi examines the life of a girl growing up in 1979 Iran in her 2003 "Persepolis."
Book publisher Hill & Wang plans to release several history titles and biographies in graphic form beginning this fall, including graphic biographies of Malcolm X and Ronald Reagan .
Video games provide more stories for graphic novels, too, with books and plotlines built around gaming characters and their environments.
There's a Halo graphic novel, for instance, based on the hugely popular, futuristic Xbox game. Such other games as "Street Fighter II," "Metal Gear" and "Bloodrayne" also have graphic-novel counterparts.
Television, too, is returning the favor of comic book inspiration ("Smallville's" imagining of a young Clark Kent in rural Kansas, for instance, borrows from "Superman for All Seasons") by supplying storylines for graphic novels. The sci-fi series "Stargate" and "Battlestar Galactica" have extra adventures found in graphic novel form.
Ironically, the increase in titles may be diluting sales for individual books. Donna Carroll, owner of Golden's Book Exchange, stocks the titles that her regular customers are interested in, but says the comparatively high cost of graphic novels makes it too expensive to maintain an extensive selection for general browsing.
Barnes & Noble Booksellers recently expanded its Japanese manga section and has found a diverse audience spanning gender and generations snapping up those titles.
Outside of individual titles from the Rurouni Kenshin ("Wandering Samurai") and Naruto series, though, customer interest is "spread across the board," said department manager Scott Smith.
Roughly two-thirds of the graphic novels sold by the bookstore are Japanese manga, with ones on superheroes, such as Batman, accounting for much of the remainder, he said.
Local book and comics sellers agree that interest in graphic novels tends to follow the release of films or television shows adapted from those works.
Will the graphic novel boom or bust in the years ahead? No one's crystal ball can tell whether flat sales or broader audiences will dominate, but Bankston notes one encouraging sign: young people interested in taking up the pen themselves.