Comics Worth Reading is the first site/publication to mention “DAD! A Documentary Graphic Novel.”

The most distinctive factor, though, is that they describe the creation as having been “filmed”, and a look at the preview shows that … well, I wouldn’t call it a graphic novel at all. It’s photos with word balloons put on. That limits what the author can do, and it doesn’t provide the level of removal I want to be able to approach the material as a story. I got caught up in trying to figure out how they arranged shots, whether they were recreating things as they happened, who took which photos when… all things that got in the way of my “reading” the pages.It feels as though someone’s trying to use the hot publishing tag “graphic novel” without going through the difficult step of drawing (or the as difficult step of finding an artist). I didn’t care for the approach.

What do you think? Am I too stuck on what graphic novels have been to see what they could be? Or is this just a storyboard on paper, not an appropriate use of the “graphic novel” tag?

All in all, her reaction is one we expected to come up at some point, but I was hoping it wouldn’t be brought up the first time the book was mentioned somewhere. She did base her post off the book’s 14 page preview, which is why I think her comments are directed more toward how “DAD!” fits in(or doesn’t) into the medium as opposed to the actual story or storytelling, but I could be wrong. Maybe she’ll be willing to check out an ARC copy of the book…