Science Fiction Genre in Graphic Novels

Definition

Science fiction is a genre that presents a fictional narrative primarily supported by elements including science and technology. Settings blend aspects of time and place to create futuristic imaginings that directly and indirectly comment on the author’s present. While there is a great deal of variation among science-fiction graphic novels, many works use dystopian settings and conventions to examine science, technology, and the human condition.

Introduction

Science fiction has a long and complex history in many media, from text-only literature and graphic novels to film, television, and video games. Part of this complexity comes from the difficulty in defining the genre. Also, many of the genre's key figures, including authors Kurt Vonnegut and Margaret Atwood, have openly rejected the label. In general terms, science fiction is a genre that incorporates science and technology, typically with some twist on time, such as being set in the future. Science fiction tends to be allegorical and often builds social commentary and criticism into the narrative.

Science Fiction in Graphic Novels

Major science-fiction novels such as Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (1953) and Rendezvous with Rama (1972) demonstrate the power of words to create and re-create entire worlds that would be nearly impossible to represent in reality. Such text-only works require a great deal of imagination on the reader's part. While science fiction has been an influential genre within film and television for many decades, much of that history has been marred by technology's inability to reproduce what writers have produced in words faithfully. Comic books and graphic novels, then, have embraced science fiction since the medium lends itself to the futuristic and surrealistic nature of the genre.

Several science-fiction books and films have been adapted as graphic novels, suggesting that the science-fiction genre lends itself well to sequential art as a medium. For example, the movie Blade Runner(1982), an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) was adapted by Marvel Comics as A Marvel Comics Super Special: Blade Runner in 1982. In 2009, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was adapted as a twenty-four-issue comic book series, eventually collected as several graphic novels that include every word of Dick's original text. Many science-fiction titles initially published in the comic book, graphic novel, or manga form are central works within the medium as a whole, among them Astro Boy (1952-1968), V for Vendetta (1982-1989), Akira(1982-1990), American Flagg! (1983-1988), Watchmen (1986-1987), Hard Boiled(1990-1992), The Invisibles (1994-2000), and Y: The Last Man (2002-2008).

Science fiction in graphic novels may include any of the following elements:

• Speculative science

• Advanced technology
• Aliens or alternative history
• Time travel, space travel, or multiple realities
• Totalitarian governments
• Medicine and drugs
• Artificial intelligencesuch as robots, cyborgs, or androids
• Automated or highly technical military or police forces
• Distortions of procreationsuch as artificial insemination or infertility
• Powerful and intrusive corporations
• Alienation and isolation
• Apocalyptic events
• Advanced computer intelligence or intrusion

Science fiction also employs the existential hero, an off-shoot of the Western gunslinger archetype. One of the most highly praised graphic novels and works of science fiction is Watchmen, which represents the influence of science-fiction elements on sequential art well. In Watchmen, superbeing Dr. Manhattan embodies aspects of science, transformation, alien beings, space travel, and superhuman qualities. Further, the superheroes in both generations of the narrative, notably Nite Owl, often use technology to fight crime. Artist Dave Gibbons and writer Alan Moore have commented that Watchmen was created to highlight the unique nature of sequential art as a medium reinforced by its ability to feature and make believable a character such as Dr. Manhattan.

Superheroes and Sci-Fi: How Do We Draw the Line?

The history of modern comic books dates back to the late 1930s and 1930s, with graphic novels rising between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s. Still, the powerful connection between science fiction and sequential art can best be seen in the revitalization of the comic book industry in the 1960s and the attendant rise of Marvel Comics. At the core of their narratives, characters such as Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Iron Man, and the Incredible Hulk blend the superhero genre with science, making genre distinctions difficult.

The rise of Marvel Comics has been in part attributed to this blending of genres—superhero, science fiction, romance—but science, technology, and alternate versions of reality have been central to most superhero comics and graphic novels since the very genesis of the genre, the introduction of Superman, and continuing through the rise of films based on comic books and graphic novels in the twenty-first century. Also at the center of superhero narratives is the "super" element, which tends to be connected in most cases to science or technology gone awry. The superhero narratives in sequential art also tend to take on allegorical aspects, as does most science fiction throughout all media.

Dystopia and Allegory

Elements of the dystopian narrative are common in text-only science fiction, and several influential graphic novels are also set in dystopian worlds. Dystopian societies in science-fiction works provide a platform for removing the readers from the current time to make them more able to look critically at their own time. A classic example of this strategy is the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949); author George Orwell inverted the year 1948 to give the dystopia the appearance of the future while warning readers of their present. Similarly, Alan Moore and David Lloyd's graphic novel V for Vendetta serves to raise readers' awareness about 1980's British politics and society, mixing an antihero's obsession with the past with his assault on the dystopian present of the graphic novel to satirize the politics of Moore's contemporary culture. Science-fiction graphic novels use the power of sequential art to create situations not bound by reality—distinct in this respect from text-only literature due to the presence of images, which are themselves different from other visual media in not being bound by the limits of film or computer-aided graphics—to satirize and warn. Using utopian and dystopian structures to raise science fiction to the level of allegory is a key element in Orwellian science fiction like V for Vendetta. The graphic novel presents a dystopian world that is like and unlike the real world many of its readers know. By removing the reader from the real world with a dystopia that has one foot in the reader's reality and the other in fiction, Moore presents an allegory that satirizes and criticizes the social and political reality of his society—England in the latter half of the twentieth century, notably the 1980's—and warns readers about topics and themes that transcend time and place, such as corporate and government oppression, hypocrisy, bigotry, and terrorism.

Impact

From the introduction of Superman, the foundational superhero in comic books, to the rise of films based on superheroes, comic books, and graphic novels in the twenty-first century, science fiction and elements of the genre have been central to comic books. The widespread interest in science fiction has contributed to their success. In Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons make science-fiction elements central to their meta-analysis of the superhero genre. The widespread success of comic books and graphic novels being adapted to film represents their crucial role in mass media. The collection of Spider-Man films (2002-2023), particularly the trilogy directed by Sam Raimi, demonstrates the influence of sequential art as a powerful and mature medium and the value of science-fiction elements in narratives across media.

In 2019, the podcast Moonrise was produced to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the first human-crewed landing on the moon. A significant narrative of Moonrise was devoted to the critical element played by science fiction writers of the 1930s and 1940s. Moonrise singled out AstoundingMagazine as being particularly influential. Its writers and graphic artists inspired a generation of young people, many who later joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as engineers and scientists. These individuals would develop the technology to reach the moon, which in many cases had been conceptualized in publications such as Astounding Magazine.  

Bibliography

Gravett, Paul. Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know. New York, Collins Design, 2005.

Harth, David. "The 15 Best Sci-Fi Comics, Ranked." CBR, 9 Jan. 2023, www.cbr.com/best-sci-fi-comics. Accessed 16 July 2024.

"How Sci-Fi Influenced Modern Technology and Innovation." Substack, 16 Mar. 2024, scifilab.substack.com/p/how-sci-fi-influenced-modern-technology. Accessed 16 July 2024.

"Introducing Moonrise." The Washington Post, 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/moonrise/introducing-moonrise. Accessed 16 July 2024.

Nevala-Lee, Alec. "How Astounding Saw the Future." The New York Times, 10 Jan. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/books/review/astounding-science-fiction-magazine.html. Accessed 16 July 2024.

Roberts, Adam. The History of Science Fiction. New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Seed, David, ed. A Companion to Science Fiction. Malden, Blackwell, 2005.