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BlackmarkBlackmark is a paperback book (Bantam S5871) published by the American company Bantam Books in January 1971. It is one of the first American graphic novels, predating works such as Richard Corben's Bloodstar (1976), Jim Steranko's Chandler: Red Tide (1976), Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy's Sabre (Sept. 1978), and Will Eisner's A Contract with God (Oct. 1978). It was conceived and drawn by comic book artist Gil Kane, and scripted by Archie Goodwin from an outline by Kane.

The term "graphic novel", while seen in print as early as 1964 in an obscure fan publication, was not in mainstream use in 1971 when Blackmark, a science fiction/sword-and-sorcery adventure, was first published; the back-cover blurb of the 30th-anniversary edition published in 2002 calls the book, retroactively, "the very first American graphic novel."

A 119-page story of comic-book art, with captions and word balloons, published in a traditional book format, Blackmark is the first graphic novel with an original heroic-adventure character conceived expressly for this form. It originally sold for 75 cents, comparable to other paperbacks at the time.

Plot
Old Earth is dead, devastated by the nuclear holocausts. New Earth lives on as a shadow world, inhabited by the vestiges of humanity, divided into tyrannical petty kingdoms, wracked by fear, superstitions, and barbaric poverty. Strange, fearsome mutated beast roam the blasted lands and waters, while on the cold northern frontiers, a race of malformed men with strange mental powers plot the eventual conquest of the planet from the fortress of Psi-Keep.

Zeph the Tinker travels with his young wife Marnie from Country Clayro through Country McCall and the Demon Waste. While Zeph is hunting game, Marnie is startled by two riders fleeing pursuers. The riders � the dying wizard-king Amarix and his companion Balzamo � make the barren woman a deal to not only transfer the post-holocaust knowledge in his head to Marnie, but to make it possible for that information to be passed onto her unborn child

That child, Blackmark, eventually becomes a gladiator slave.

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