The word 'novel' implies a whole, uninterupted story with a beginning, middle, and end. That's why JMS called Babylon 5 a 'novel for television,' as opposed to an episodic series in which we hit the reset button at the end of every one.
Comics kinda go both ways. There are individual issues every so often, but the vast majority work in six-issue arcs, thanks in no small part to the trade paperback market. Each issue then becomes more like a chapter. It usually has its own mini-arc, and it's also a uniform length/format, which is different from a chapter.
I think the closest kin to the comicbook is the serial novels that were published in the 18th century. Heart of Darkness and Great Expectations were both published serially, and R.L. Stevenson wrote Jekyll and Hyde to be published serially (you can tell by all the section breaks in what is only a 60-page novella), but the publishers liked it so much they put it out in a single volume. Ironically, we now call all of these books 'novels' and read them as such.
I resist the term 'novel' for comics because I think comics do something slightly different, structurally, but by the reasoning that the difference is serial publication and serial reading, they can be novels if we read them like novels. Which is to say, if you sit down and read Sandman in one sitting (over the course of a week in which you never go to the bathroom), then it's like a novel. If you read it issue by issue over a six-year period, then it's a different experience, and therefore it's not a 'novel' experience anymore.
Posted by orion at November 29, 2005 1:57 PM