While bowing to your superior knowledge of Dutch , I don't think you are quite right here. The lines between categories are blurred. A comic; a comic book (a phrase I never heard when young in Scotland.); comic strip; trade paperback; graphic novel. We all know that Maus or The Killing Joke are graphic novels. There they are, complete in themselves. So what about the GN which is a part of a longer series? Continued in fact from the previous GN. De Rode Ridder is a very long series of comics. Or is it a series of short graphic novels? Most issues complete in themselves. Or Lucky Luke. Perhaps a series of comics in what looks like a gn format.
Despite my poor knowledge of Dutch - I can read basic descriptions or at least get a gist of what's meant - I have visited The Netherlands many times and one of my great pleasures when there is visiting as many comic shops, stripwinkels, as I can. And I'm aware from chatting to comic shop owners that they interchange terminologies. In fact, if you go to online stripwinkels, you will find graphic novels; trade paperbacks described as strips.
Some comic shops describe themselves as a "Stripboekhandel" and offer everything from floppies to hb graphic novels, often incl in between, lilliputs/piccolinos; ancient beeldverhaal; newspaper strip reprints in various formats.
I'm sure you will pick my arguments apart but you were very forceful in your post but didn't give an alternative.
I think this is just semantics. I don't disagree, at all, about what you just wrote. That is all true. But, I think "Stripboeken" doesn't include some forms of sequential story art that English describes as "storied sequential art", but altogether is equivalent to BD. In other words, the word "Comics" in English is a wider term than comic books, and "Strips" in Dutch, is a wider term than "Stripboeken" (but in recent years has also been used as a synonym for that word), just as in English, "comics" has often been used as a synonym for "comic books".
But THAT fact doesn't make that usage "correct", because it is illogical, and takes meaning away, forcing the reader or listener to depend upon context to understand the reference, when sometimes the context doesn't exist, so the reference becomes ambiguous. This is a pet peeve of mine with those people (now most of The World) who argue that languages are "living entities, and "grammar and spelling "errors" become "correct" once changes are used by half the population speaking them, regardless if they are illogical, and remove utility by making speech and writing more ambiguous and/or less understandable.
Logic tells me that BD is the widest term, with the wider definitions of the Dutch "strips" and English "comics" being second widest, and the wider definition of "stripboeken" next, and then the narrower version of "stripboeken" after that, and the English "comic books" the narrowest. The widest term in English seems to be "narrated sequential art", for which BD, although not meaning exactly that, is the closest to equivalent. The problem is that some of these terms have two meanings - one wider, and one narrower.
In other words, I'm a tight-assed old fogie, who believes that when you leave your comic books on the floor, and your parents want you to remove them, they should be described as "comic books" or "stripboeken", and NOT as "comics" or "strips", because that could possibly be confusing. And I believe that one should not say, "I could care less" when he or she means "I
COULDN'T care less!" Those two situations are different, but they both take away utility for understanding from the language, and so, can lead to misunderstandings, which can lead to problems. Languages were developed from a need to communicate. Communication is hurt by having less understanding.
I agree with you 100% that the terms (categories) are blurred. And of course the name of a shop is not going to contain a reference to EVERY type of printed material it has contained at one time or another! Or maybe a "printed Material Shop" WOULD be best!
"Joop's Printed Material Shoppe". "Captain Marvel's Narrated and Dialogued Sequential Art Emporium"
What I meant was that The French seem to use a wider, more encompassing term than The English and Dutch for their familiar term, and I'm jealous that we don't also have a less wordy, more commonly-used, wider term.