NEWSFLASH: “Comic Book” Is Still More Popular Than “Graphic Novel”
by T. Hodler
Friday, December 17, 2010
You may have seen people using Google’s new Ngram program today. I gave it a try myself with a pretty obvious comparison.
This chart compares the usage of the two terms in all books printed between the years 1900 and 2008, at least among those that have been scanned into Google. Nothing really surprising here in terms of when the terms take off in public consciousness.
Here’s 1930 through 2008, for a slightly clearer picture:
So nothing major to report here, I guess, but idle curiosity sated. Enjoy your weekend.
UPDATE: As suggested by Robert Boyd in comments, here are the 1900-2008 results with the term “comic strip” added:
Labels: statistics
Try it with the words “comic strip” and “comic book”. Comic book only decisively pulls ahead in 1992.
Many of the uses of the word “comic book” may be contemptuous or condescending. It’s too bad Ngram doesn’t factor in the context.
I wonder if google includes any data from scanned comic books and graphic novels?
Fine, but how does the New York TImes get “graphic books” to describe comics?
http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2010-11-14/hardcover-graphic-books/list.html
Sam: The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. No doubt many if not most of the uses of the phrase “comic books” in 1952-55 were negative.
I like to use, “funny books.”
Mainly because it gives fits to the local comics shop owner.
Check out the singular vs. plural of “comic book”:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=comic+books%2Ccomic+book&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3
What’s not clear is whether the hits for the singular are inclusive of both phrases. But either way, this seems to confirm that the 1950s were the heyday of generalizations…
what in heck was going on in 1901-1908/9 (?) ???
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@lastworthy: Google did scan most of our comics & graphic novels in the library when they came through a couple of years ago.