Action and Adventure Genre in Graphic Novels
The Action and Adventure genre in graphic novels focuses on conflicts that occur in a realistic setting, steering clear of the fantastical elements often found in superhero, fantasy, or science-fiction narratives. This genre typically features protagonists, such as private investigators or soldiers, who engage in violent resolutions like chases or fights, emphasizing themes of heroism and the restoration of order in chaotic environments. While the genre aims for a sense of realism, it often adopts a stylized approach to violence, allowing characters to endure extraordinary trials without realistic consequences.
Although action-adventure stories are less prevalent in graphic novels compared to other media, they encompass a broad range of narratives, from classic literature adaptations to retellings of historical events. The genre has evolved as audience preferences shifted towards more fantastical stories, prompting a decline in the production of traditional action-adventure comics. Nonetheless, the foundational elements of action-adventure continue to influence contemporary narratives, even within fantasy and science fiction, illustrating its lasting impact on the comic industry. Readers are drawn to the escapism and dynamic storytelling that action-adventure provides, even as it transforms in response to changing tastes.
Action and Adventure Genre in Graphic Novels
Definition
Comic books and graphic novels in the action-adventure genre focus on conflicts that occur in the “real world”they avoid the plots, settings, or characters found in action-oriented superhero, fantasy, and science-fiction works. Action-adventure heroes and heroines perform unlikely or impossible deeds under the premise that such events could actually happen.
Introduction
Action-adventure storytelling sets up a conflict that requires some form of violent resolutiona chase, a fight, or some other sort of struggle. The genre is narrow in that it traditionally does not include fantastic plot elements found in many different genres. Yet, because the genre can encompass the whole of human history and all human societies, it can theoretically be used as a platform to tell stories about people and places at any point in the past or present. Thus, Westerns, samurai stories, Viking sagas, and modern-day police dramas may all fall under the action-adventure category.
Pulp adventure characters such as the bronze giant Doc Savage and the cloaked vigilante the Shadow are not examples of action-adventure characters, as they are outlandish and exaggerated by their very nature and do not fit within the world that action-adventure stories seek to depict—a world like the real one. It is important, however, to note that the purported realism of the genre is itself a stylistic trope. The world of action-adventure stories is very similar to the real world, but such stories do not necessarily represent a one-for-one depiction of life as it is.
The somewhat fantastic realism of the action-adventure genre is particularly evident in the genre's treatment of violence. From comic book adaptations of Alexandre Dumas's novel The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires, 1844; English translation, 1846) to action comics pitting cops or spies against "the bad guys," action-adventure stories typically take a frivolous approach to violent action. Little more than a token mention is given to the real-world physical effects of violence on the characters, who shrug off gunshots and sprint down streets without becoming tired. In terms of the frequency and nature of violent action, the adventure genre is a purer fantasy than fantasy itself—the stories present themselves as narratives that could really happen if one were merely to step outside the bounds of a dull, ordinary life.
Action-adventure stories are not as common in graphic novels and comic books as in other media, particularly filmthey continue to constitute a small genre. The increasing popularity of more fantastic or speculative genres has lessened the influence of action-adventure, reducing the number of such stories published and raising questions about the fate of the genre. However, because nearly all popular genres include elements of the action-adventure story structure—often mirroring mythologist Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey," a narrative path found within myth, folklore, and popular media from a variety of disparate cultures, with its "call to adventure"—this change may be viewed more as a transformation than an actual extinction.
The Lawless World
A basic assumption of the action-adventure genre is that merely one step beyond everyday life's visible or invisible bounds waits for a world of bold decisions, savage action, and highly attenuated experience. The point-of-view character is generally a private investigatoras in Gil Kane's His Name Is . . . Savage!)a crime journalist (Michele Petrucci's Due), a police investigator (the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation adaptation from IDW Publishing), or a soldier (M. Zachary Sherman and Fritz Casas's Bloodlines). Action-adventure protagonists have one thing in commonthey follow the formula of a hero who reacts to what a villain has done. The protagonist enters the world of violence and danger and may even relish it, but they are the instrument of its positive resolution. Like the hero of a Western, the action-adventure hero or heroine enters a place and time of chaos and restores order. Therefore, crime graphic novels such as Joshua Fialkov's Tumor and John Wagner and Vince Locke's A History of Violence are not properly within the purview of action-adventure storytelling, as they follow outlaw characters who play a role in instigating conflict.
Will Jacobs and Gerard Jones's The Trouble with Girls directly explores the central idea of the action-adventure genre: The protagonist need only make the slightest misstep for wild goings-on to ensue. Despite the general realism of the genre, such over-the-top events can present a problem for some readers. The Trouble with Girls is emblematic of graphic novel audiences' difficulty in suspending disbelief when reading action-adventure stories. Warren Ellis's Red similarly deconstructs the idea of the adventure story in a modern world, taking situations and characters well over the top.
Literature and History
Several action-adventure comic books and graphic novels have been based on classic works of literature. The venerable Classics Illustrated line of comics, originally published by the Gilberton Company, has been translated successfully to the larger-format graphic novel medium, enabling artists to produce adaptations of such novels as Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). It would be impossible to argue that Steven Grant's adaptation of Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo (Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, 1844-1846; English translation, 1846) is not an action-adventure story. Many comic storytellers writing in other genres, including 300 author Frank Miller, have cited the influence of literary adventure narratives on their works, and the structural crossovers are obvious. However, the Classics Illustrated line and similar works from publishers such as Penny-Farthing Press and Stone Arch Books are far from the mainstream of sequential art.
In keeping with the action-adventure genre's ability to transcend the boundaries of time and place, several significant works in the genre have been retellings or fictionalizations of historical events. Warren Ellis's Crécy presents a short, well-researched historical narrative concerning the fourteenth-century Battle of Crécy, a significant battle in the Hundred Years' War. Age of Bronze, by Eric Shanower, chronicles the legendary Trojan War and draws on literary sources such as Homer's Odyssey and historical and archaeological evidence.
Evolution of the Genre
American and international consumer tastes have largely moved away from traditional action-adventure stories and toward fantastic genres in most areas. Non-real-world settings, situations, and characters are commercially popular, and comic writers are offered additional creative freedompublishing trends have reflected these factors. Stories with familiar action-adventure protagonists such as military personnel or police officers, for instance, are often set in fantastic or science-fictional worlds; non-real-world comics that display action-adventure characteristics include the Alien Legion military series, created by Carl Potts, Alan Zelenetz, and Frank Cirocco, and Alan Moore's superhero police drama Top 10.
In addition to changing industry trends, the decrease in the number of action-adventure comics and graphic novels available is partly due to the narrow bounds of the genre. In a modern, industrialized setting, a wild series of adventures that are resolved through "action" would be illegal or, at best, the province of a national government's military, intelligence, or police agencies; therefore, many classic action-adventure protagonists would be considered dangerous or even criminal. Since one of the differences between the crime and action-adventure genres is that career criminals are antagonists rather than protagonists in action-adventure stories, comics featuring protagonists who work in opposition to the law do not fit the strict definition of action-adventure. Similarly, specific categories of stories, such as Westerns and pirate tales, have become subgenres unto themselves and are thus excluded from the action-adventure genre. This process of elimination leaves very few straightforward action-adventure comics and graphic novels.
The most successful action-adventure narratives of the Modern Age of comics appear to be those that mix traditional action-adventure concepts with fantasy, science-fiction, or superhero elements—titles such as G. I. Joe, a nonrealistic military series, The Walking Dead, and Y: The Last Man, a series featuring apocalyptic events that only vaguely resemble real disaster situations, and Jonah Hex, a somewhat hallucinatory approach to the American frontier of the nineteenth century. Even works such as Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemenwhich brings together characters from a variety of literary sourcesrely more upon the "sense of wonder" characters such as H. G. Wells's Invisible Man than "realistic" literary figures such as Kate Douglas Wiggin's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
Impact
The action-adventure genre has significantly influenced the comics industry, inspiring later publications that build on the genre's classic tropes, situations, and character types. Although the popularity of traditional action-adventure comics has declined in favor of more fantastic or speculative stories, such popular fantasy, science-fiction, and superhero narratives are typically based on an action-adventure foundation, making them all subsets of the action-adventure story model. Audiences continue to seek the escape of freewheeling, fast-moving adventure and the catharsis of problems resolved through violent actionthe genre has shifted and transformed to meet its readers' needs.
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