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Why 2003 is not really the 25th anniversary of the graphic novel in the USA.


The San Diego Comic-Con International is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the graphic novel in America this July 17-20 and although we love Will Eisner's work, his graphic novel was not really the first in the United States. We would like to set the record straight for future comic historians and give credit where it is really due.

In 1973, while a second year college student at California State University at Long Beach, Phil Yeh founded a free newspaper called Uncle Jam, covering health, books, the arts and travel. Yeh who had also started a successful comic strip for the college newspaper called Cazco in 1972 (it began the first week that Yeh was in college), had decided to give the daily newspaper some competition. One of the students who joined the small Uncle Jam staff was a young cartoonist called Roberta Gregory. Yeh was blown away by her talent and offered her the cover spot for the very first issue published on November 5, 1973. Today you can see animated versions of Gregory's work on the Oxygen tv network and also in her comic book series Naughty Bits. Another student at the first staff meeting was writer Gregg Rickman, who would go on to do the last series of interviews with the late author Philip K. Dick for both Uncle Jam and for a series of books that Yeh would later publish. Bladerunner and Total Recall are among the films inspired by Dick's stories. Today, Rickman is film professor at San Francisco State University and working on a fourth Philip K.Dick book.

The true history of the arts scene in Long Beach has often been overlooked by the mass media and especially the comic book press but quite a few talented writers and artists lived in the seaside town in the shadow of Los Angeles. One of the early comic book stores in America was Richard Kyle Books originally Wonderworld Books. Kyle befriended Yeh when he was an 18 year old freshman and even hired him to paint the store's sign on the front of the building. Kyle had many professional contacts in the world of comics and science fiction (including Jack Kirby and Harlan Ellison) and over the years Yeh would have many a spirited conversation with Kyle about the state of comics in America. In addition to running his store, Kyle published his own magazines and had very strong opinions about what was good and what was not.

In the December 1976 issue of Uncle Jam (which was for two years a section in Cobblestone, Yeh's other paper), this review of "Beyond Time and Again" written by David Miles was published. That issue also featured a full color cover especially created for Yeh by the late legendary underground and rock artist Rick Griffin. Yeh took his old high school friend Greg Escalante (now with Juxtapoz Magazine) and Tom Luth (comic book colorist for Sergio Aragones among others and illustrator) to conduct a rare interview with Griffin. Here is a quote from Mile's review about the Metzger book that Richard Kyle had just co-published.

"Beyond Time and Again", Metzger's almost legendary underground comic strip, out of print since 1972, when it was last published in weekly installments by the short-lived Los Angeles Staff, is now back in print as a lavish hardback book by Kyle and Wheary, a new Huntington Beach publishing company, created to preserve this first true graphic novel in America--and one of the most important books in the last twenty years."

The year was 1976 when this review was published for Metzger's book. Comic historians, please note that this is more than a year before Eisner is credited in 1978 with having the "first" graphic novel in America. Some may argue that Metzger's work was a collection of strips gathered together to make a whole novel and thus not a true graphic novel. We don't believe that since Metzger's work was more than a mere comic strip.

In 1976, Yeh published his first collection of new comic strips based on his Cazco character as a Graphic Album. In 1977, Yeh and Roberta Gregory teamed up to do a whole graphic album for kids called Jam. And that same year, Yeh released his first page graphic novel in an 8 1/2 x 11 squarebound format, and 80 pages of a completely created new material in one package. The introductions to this graphic novel were by MAD magazine's Sergio Aragones and the late Golden Age artist Don Rico. Inside the cover under the copyright page, Yeh used the term graphic novel when talking about another project soon to come.

In meeting Don Rico, Yeh was also introduced to the beautiful woodcuts of Lynd Ward who did graphic novels in the 1930s so the concept of graphic novels can hardly be said to be born in 1976 or 1977 or 1978... but for modern American comic book history it is important to understand that not only was Long Beach a home for the birth of this wonderful art form, it was also the place that Uncle Jam and Yeh's publishing company would champion the graphic novel and the comic art form for many years. Uncle Jam was distributed through public libraries, bookstores, art theaters, and museums from Santa Barbara to San Diego. It was also distributed at all the major comic book and science fiction conventions in Southern California until 1991. Cover artists in this groundbreaking free paper (which had full color in 1975) included: Kelly Freas, Flavia, Alfredo Alcala, Moebius, Greg Hildebrandt, John Pound, Wendy Pini, Sergio Aragones, and many others. Uncle Jam also featured contributions by or interviews with such notable people as: Ray Bradbury, Leonard Nimoy, Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Harvey Kurtzman, Matt Groening, Laura Huxley, Norman Cousins, Gary Owens, Wally Famous Amos, and many others.

Yeh followed his first graphic novel with Ajaneh (1978), Godiva (1979), and Cazco in China (1980). Cazco in China was the first published appearance of Yeh's Winged Tiger character and inspired by Yeh's trip to his father's home in 1979. Yeh's dad had left China in 1948 and could not go home for more than 30 years because of the Communist closed-door policy. Yeh also wrote a series of landmark articles about his trip to China in Uncle Jam called Shanghai Waltz. In 1995, Yeh returned to Beijing,China to paint his first mural at a children's book fair. It was his fourth trip to his father's home.

In 1985, Uncle Jam published an interview with the cookie king Wally Famous Amos that changed the direction of Yeh's life. Aside from his cookies, Amos is also the national spokesperson for Literacy Volunteers of America. When Amos explained to Yeh the seriousness of the illiteracy problem, he inspired Yeh to found Cartoonists Across America & The World. As part of Yeh's literacy and arts campaign around the world, he continues to produce graphic novels, comics, and to champion the comic art form in thousands of public appearances to the present day. He is currently working on a new Cazco graphic novel for the fall of 2003.

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