Printed in a high quality 8 1/2" by 11" magazine format, and with work by some of the industries most prominent talent, the Marvel Graphic Novels were Marvel's attempt at emulating European-style graphic novels rising in popularity at the time. Starting in 1982, each graphic novel was a complete, self-contained event, each related to the others only by the common "Marvel Graphic Novel" imprint. Later the titles became somewhat less self-contained. The novels were also characterized by stories targeted at more mature audience both in the art -- which occasionally featured gore and nudity not possible under the American Comics Code -- and in the story lines, which dealt with topics such as coping with the inevitability of death. The first novels were numbered from 1 through 20, with each containing a list of all graphic novel's up to that point. The numbering was then dropped, but the lists were maintained until "Silver Surfer: Judgment Day". The Overstreet Price Guide continued to number those titles as 21 through 38, and other price guides did likewise. There were several graphic novels which did not find their way onto the lists, or into Overstreet's numbering, however, such as "Iron Man: Crash" from the Epic graphic novels, or the six Marvel UK graphic novels. When Marvel stopped including a list of previous graphic novels in new releases, Overstreet likewise dropped the numbering. The last comic to bear the Marvel Graphic Novel logo was the 1993 title "Daredevil & Black Widow: Abattoir."
Others:
Marvel UK Graphic Novels[]
References[]
- Silver Bullet Comicbooks' Answerman column, with Bob Rozakis, answering the question, "is there a list of all the Marvel Graphic Novels published in the '80s and early '90s?"
- Spotlight:Marvel Graphic Novels, Marvel Age #61 (April, 1988)