The Evolution of the Contemporary Graphic Novel: Gil Kane’s His Name Is … Savage! and Blackmark

Abstract

Nineteen sixty-seven bore witness to many events that are nothing more than dimmemories today. NASA was gearing up to send astronauts into orbit around themoonwithin a year. The VietnamWarwas beginning to divide the country. Comic books and the development of a format for extended sequential storytelling, now commonly referred to as a graphic novel, were hardly high on the agenda of important things to consider. In 1967, the comic book industry experienced a drop in its sales for the first time since the start of the superhero boom now referred to by comics historians as the “Silver Age.”