Style is a funny word — we all think we know what it means because we look at a cartoonist’s work and we see the evidence of it there.
The “words & pictures” that make up the comics language are often described as prose and illustration combined.
A comic might come together in my mind over a span of years — just ideas randomly colliding/combining until some magic synthesis happens and a story develops.
If you really think about it, even what you might call realistic styles of cartooning are actually very abstracted.
Graphic novel is a red herring name — something that was come up with to provide a more respectable term for comic book.
It appears to me that this new generation wants to get some “fun” back into the medium and that they aren’t all that interested in producing “long and complex” narratives like the “old farts” of my cartooning generation.
The history of cartooning is mostly the history of famous cartoon “characters” — not powerful or meaningful stories.
I find that the longer the period is between actually working on a comic strip, the more likely I am to be depressed.
Whenever I hear someone say they met someone who doesn’t know how to read a comic book I am always perplexed.