Graphic Novels
Links and learning materials about English-language graphic novelsThe term graphic novel may strike some people as pretentious, but the works below (and others that I plan to add to this page in the future, such as V for Vendetta, Persepolis, and American Born Chinese) are much more than just “comic books”; they are literature, with unique devices and characteristics that can be used by skillful writers and artists to tell sophisticated stories.
Click on the name of any graphic novel listed below to open a page with resources related to that work.
Gaiman, Neil
Neil Gaiman is now the author of several bestselling novels, but he became famous for the comic book series he created, The Sandman, which showed that there was an audience for challenging, complex graphic stories and remains one of the most acclaimed comics of all time. Dark and often surreal, it explores the experiences of Morpheus, the God of Dreams, in a world inhabited by characters from many different mythological and religious traditions.
Moore, Alan
Though Moore’s Watchmen is a graphic novel, its depth and sophistication is such that it made Time‘s All-Time 100 Novels list (more specifically, the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923). Most fundamentally, it’s a superhero story that deconstructs the romanticization of superheroes, presenting them as deeply flawed human beings, but its ambitions go much further than that. Among other things, it’s also a dystopian novel presenting an alternate history of the United States. Read it as you would read the best literature, because that’s what it is—it will reward your time and attention.
Watchmen Study Questions (PDF)