Comic authors who also wrote "real" books

[Wolf Boy2]

My mother (who hates comics) challenged me to name any authors she has heard of who wrote comics. She feels that comics are something that no-talent hacks get stuck in comics because they can't write real books. Conversely, she feels, no "real" writer would condescend to to writing "cartoon books."

I know James Patterson, Ted Dekker and Dean Koontz have written graphic novels, and I think Ian Flemming might have written a James Bond daily strip back in the day.

Are there any others? Or are comic/novel crossovers really that rare?

[Palin Dromos]

Neil Gaiman
Greg Rucka
Micheal Chabon
Brad Meltzer
Kevin Smith (he's written a book)

That's just off the top of my head.
I'll post others I think of later.

[Shawn Hopkins]

You know, it really is an unfair question. Just because people from another medium haven't made a name in it doesn't mean that the medium in question is invalid. No one expects anyone to try to validate television by showing them a list of radio people that work in it, or at least they haven't since the very early days of television.

Also, just because you see a famous author's name on a comic book, doesn't mean they actually wrote it. It may just be an adaptation and you can't count adapted works so much.

Brad Meltzer is a pretty good start. He was a relatively famous author who wrote some big DC series.
Harlan Ellison has written some stories originally for comic books.
http://www.steampunk.com/sfch/bibliographies/hecbb.html
Jodi Picoult is a bestselling writer who wrote Wonder Woman for a while.
Clive Barker wrote a few comic book stories himself and also had a lot of his stuff adapted. He had his own Marvel Comics imprint, Razorline, for a while.
Orson Scott Card has written several things for Marvel Comics.
Larry Niven wrote a very influential Green Lantern story, Ganthet's Tale.


And then there are creators mostly known for comics who also write books:

Peter David is just about as famous for Star Trek Novels as he is for comic books
Chris Claremont has written novels

[Bloody Marquis]

Alan Moore once wrote a novel called Voice of the Fire.

[W.C.Reaf]

Ian Rankin wrote a Hellblazer comic.

[Bloody Marquis]

Also, Warren Ellis did a book called Crooked Little Vein.

[Ed Liu]

Neil Gaiman is probably the most impressive one, who moved from comics to novel-writing and won tons of awards for it. Of course, she could always counter that he "graduated" from comics to "real" books, and she might have a point, since almost none of Gaiman's comic work done after he started writing novels have been quite as good as Sandman or his other seminal work in the 90's.

If she's willing to expand from novel-writers to TV-writers, you can probably expand to almost the entire writing staff of Lost, Heroes, and Buffy/Angel/Firefly/Dollhouse.

Really, though, your best defense might be to just say, "Uh-huh, that's nice, mom" and ignore her. If it's your money, she can denigrate as much she wants. Don't matter to you any. She doesn't sound like the type who would be swayed by handing her something like Mom's Cancer (http://news.toonzone.net/articles/27143/moms-cancer-the-best-graphic-novel-youve-never-heard-of), Persepolis, Maus, or any number of books by Will Eisner.

[creativerealms]

Peter David Writes novels in addition to comics. But since most of his novels tend to be based on Tv shows and such (He probably wrote some of the best Star Trek novels with his New Frontier series) so depending on who you ask they might not be "real books"

[Anthonynotes]

Back in the day, Gardner Fox wrote various sci-fi (and other genre) books as well as comics for DC...

[Shawn Hopkins]

Thought of another one. Jonathan Lethem, a serious, capital A bestselling and award-winning author recently wrote an Omega the Unknown miniseries for Marvel, reviving the obscure 1970s Steve Gerber character. I think you win the bet, here, because if your momma hasn't heard of Lethem, it's possible that she doesn't follow books closely enough for her conditions to count. And Lethem wasn't slumming in comics or earning the rent, he wanted to work on them and specifically on Omega the Unknown.

[Hanshotfirst113]

Isn't Mike Carey a novelist now too?

[Wolf Boy2]

Really, though, your best defense might be to just say, "Uh-huh, that's nice, mom" and ignore her. If it's your money, she can denigrate as much she wants. Don't matter to you any. She doesn't sound like the type who would be swayed by handing her something like Mom's Cancer (http://news.toonzone.net/articles/27143/moms-cancer-the-best-graphic-novel-youve-never-heard-of), Persepolis, Maus, or any number of books by Will Eisner.
Oh, I was just curious. My conversation with her made me wonder, but I wasn't seriously looking for argument leverage.

After she called Alex Ross's work (Marvels and Kingdom Come) "ugly cartoons" and "terrible art" that "doesn't look real", I realized she was just trying to irritate me and I gave up on taking her seriously. ;)

[EroSennin]

J. Micheal Straczynski has written novels based on Babylon 5 along with comics and quite a few of the Star wars novel writers have also written comics including Timothy Zahn and Micheal Stackpole. And im pretty sure James Patterson has a written a comic about his Maximum Ride Series.

[Jon T]

Another older but notable example would be Edmond Hamilton, who in addition to writing many science-fiction stories, including the Captain Future series, also contributed many comicbook stories to DC Comics, including "Superman Under the Red Sun" from Action #300.

[spidl]

Isn't Mike Carey a novelist now too?

Yes, four of his books are out now with more on the way.