Have you heard???Graphic novels serving as inspiration for movies? It’s true!

Graphic novels serve as rich source material for film producers looking for ready-to-visualize stories, and they’re viewed as product extensions of comic book publishers, video game makers and television series.

[snip]Where comic book publishers once feared the dwindling numbers of their core audience, young men who bought comics on a weekly basis, they’re finding new life in compiling those weekly releases into book form, often called trade paperbacks.

Doing so has broadened their fan base, as adult men, soccer moms and fans of the artwork found graphic novels a better fit for their time-pressed lifestyles, Bankston said.

Longtime aficionados of the graphical storytelling found in Japanese comics, or manga, whose American fan base is rapidly expanding, and French and Belgian comics also are drifting over to English-language graphic novels.