How do I label a graphic novel series?

Question

Similar to the issues brought up in Structuring a novel like a television or graphic novel series, I'm adjusting a saga I'd conceived as an animated TV series of ~42min episodes, 13 episodes per season. Each season is a self-contained arc of characters and locations within the longer saga.

Now I'm writing the script, and have scaled back the artwork to a more manageable "animated" graphic novel (my artwork with some interactive elements) aimed for web and tablet. I think there aren't really any publishing rules for this format, but the 42 minute episode is roughly analogous to a 48 page comic, so essentially the TV script adjusted to an animated comicbook.

Here's my problem: I have the original title of the big saga which also works as the title of the "pilot" episode. I never had official names for the individual seasons, and I'm not sure how to refer to them now (volumes?) or how to label the individual episodes (issues?).

I'm not trying to be post-modern and deliberately blur media conventions (calling my symphonies "architecture" and my comicbooks "TV shows"), or cute like George Lucas and announce I have a serialized saga prematurely. But I intend to stick to my structure: 13 sequential "episodes" for each story arc "book" in the series, however it's called.

How can I create a naming/numbering convention that is future-proof, and clearly communicates the nature of the volume/episode structure to the reader?

Answer 1

Seems like almost any combination of {Season,Volume,Book}# - {Episode/Chapter/Issue}# is fine. You could choose to restart the smaller number or not. Even TV shows have a mix from what I've seen, though netflix appears to retcon all of them to Season X / Episode 1 (starting from 1 for each season).

I've at minimum seen television play with all of these. Some animated series have books instead of seasons (Avatar: Last Airbender primary among them; Or Stranger Things with chapters). As long as your target audience groks what you're throwing at them, I don't think it matters much. And it seems like you know enough about your structure to simply do the same thing everyone else does.

I'd recommend restarting episode/chapter counts for each season as it is simpler to talk about, which is probably what you want. But otherwise, pick your words for the mind space & tone they create if there isn't accepted terminology for your medium. If you're managing your own publishing, it won't matter and if you're doing the other thing then the publisher will likely handle this themselves.