Most consider Will Eisner's 1978 A Contract with God and Other Apartment Stories to be the earliest graphic novels. Over the next decade, the three authors published books that helped define the form as a legitimate, unique way to tell stories. The first was Maus by Art Spiegelman, which was written and sold as a comic strip.
They used the term graphic novel because the story (about a son interviewing Customer Phone Number List his father about life in a concentration camp during World War II) didn't fit the traditional definition of "comic book"—there were no superheroes. This is a memoir written in comic form.
In the late 1980s, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchmen (both originally also sold as series) were released as full-length graphic novels .