Between the late 1980s and the present day, the graphic novel has become an accepted medium for literary and visual creativity and storytelling. This successful development cannot be attributed to a single cause or effect, and to attempt to locate such a thing would be reductive. When in 1986–1987, Moore and Gibbons’s Watchmen, Spiegelman’s Maus, and Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns were picked up in the media and soon described as the “big three” graphic novels, it was after years of development of adult comics. This chapter (1) makes a series of arguments to try to unpick further some of the hidden wiring behind the breakthrough of the graphic novel in 1986–1987, and (2) discusses some of the dominant strands in more recent production: history and reportage, autobiography, women creators, and revival of genre-driven works. The chapter ends with some more general suggestions as to the lessons provided by history.

1986: the breakthrough of the “big three”

It is first important to emphasize that the successes of Spiegelman, Moore and Gibbons, and Miller had their roots in the threshold period of the later 1970s, which we analyzed in Chapter 3. It was in that period that comix were slowly changing into a new, less frivolous format, and the concept of the graphic novel first gained some common usage and initial public interest. We can add here that both Spiegelman and Moore had been working on developing adult comics for much of the 1980s before their names became famous as founding figures of the graphic novel.