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Abstract
“Comic art does possess the potential for the most serious and sophisticated literary and artistic expression, and we can only hope that future artists will bring the art form to full fruition” (176), prophesied Lawrence Abbott in 1986. It became true when Graphic Fiction emerged as a hybrid genre and entered into the academia. It is a meaningful interaction of words, image panels, and typography. They have a long history dating back to cave paintings and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Though there are “more genetic similarities between the comic book and the graphic novel” (Sardesai 28), Graphic Novel has a unique approach to plot, narration, and theme. This new genre combines visual and verbal rhetoric and thus offers a hybrid form of reading. The use of blank spaces between image panels provides “imaginative interactivity” (Tabachnick 25), as the reader tends to fill in these blanks, imagining a good deal of action. Text boxes, speech bubbles, and thought bubbles streamline the narration and create a sense of interactivity in a reader. This paper records the history of Graphic Novel and makes an anatomy of it. It also enlists recent Graphic novels and major techniques employed in them.