The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel offers a finely nuanced and confidently narrated history of the medium of the graphic novel. While this statement probably seems unsurprising to scholars in other fields, it may come as a shock to many within comics studies. This is because the very use of the term “graphic novel” is a perennial point of exasperation for those within the field. Many of the leading creators and critics of comics and graphic narratives find the term “graphic novel” unhelpful and even pretentious, pointing out that “graphic novels” often have little in common with the long-form fictional narrative of the novel. The contemporary use of the term, it is often noted, was popularized largely by publishers who were looking to promote long-form comics and anthologies as serious works of literature. Even Art Spiegelman, whose book Maus (1980–91) was instrumental to the rise of the graphic novel, regularly voices concerns that the term is problematic because his book is nonfictional family history rather than a “novel” per se. Few, however, will deny that, starting in the late 1970s and running through the present, comics, graphic narratives, and graphic novels have increasingly gained recognition as a potentially serious genre, able to express far more than superheroes or the funnies.

Editors Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey, and Stephen E. Tabachnick treat this debate as opportunity rather than hazard. Over its impressive thirty-five chapters, The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel thus addresses the graphic novel not as a history of an easily identifiable medium, but instead as an ever-shifting collection of approaches and historical developments that propelled comics and graphic narrative toward their increasing recognition as a serious artistic and literary form.

The volume opens with a compelling group of chapters that map out the circumstances and influences driving graphic narrative into increasingly ambitious and artistically serious territory from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present. Denis Mellier's chapter “The Origins of Adult Graphic Narrative” traces the common origins of the picaresque novels of Laurence Sterne and his ilk through the early picture stories of figures like Rodolphe Töpffer and Gustav Doré. This conversation is, in turn, enriched – and at times contradicted – by essays that follow, which insist that the turn towards adult-oriented graphic narrative is just as easily located in the pages of MAD magazine, beat-era literature, and the increasing ambition of Marvel comics’ psychologically complex silver-age superheroes.

From here, The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel lingers on the mid-1980s as the crucial inflection point. As the editors note, “it is regularly acknowledged that 1986 and much of the later 80s and early 1990s was when graphic novels became a commercially significant and critically recognized new literary phenomenon” with the release of Spiegelman's first full volume of Maus, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen and Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. These releases were, however, just the “spear-tip” of developments that had been going on for decades (5). There was the upgrading of genre comics with Moore's own Swamp Thing and V for Vendetta, R. Crumb and Harvey Pekar's delightfully twisted work in the Underground Comix scene, and the groundbreaking francophone science fiction of Moebius and Bilal. This rush of creativity was in turn complemented by the increasingly scholarly temperament of fan communities, a movement exemplified by the fanzine-turned-academic journal Comics Journal (explored in the chapter by Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith).

The final third of the book takes its analysis into the present with an exhaustive survey of the incredible diversity of forms and themes that emerged after the year 2000. These range from Ann Miller's piece on Joe Sacco and graphic journalism, to Martha Kuhlman's explorations of Chris Ware experimentalism, to David Ball's excellent wide-ranging survey of the graphic novel in world literature – a topic deserving of an entire volume on its own.

In spite (or perhaps because) of the contested status of the concept of the graphic novel, The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel achieves far more than one typically expects from a reference book. Rather than merely compiling or summarizing a scholarly consensus, it generates an entirely new, original historical account. That Baetens, Frey, and Tabachnik saw the anthology as the medium for this task speaks to both their skill as editors and insight as scholars. Regardless of where one stands on the viability of “the graphic novel” as a critical concept, The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel will be essential reading for scholars and teachers of comics, graphic narratives, and graphic novels.