Although the concept of using a collection of images in sequence to tell a story dates to ancient times (one could go so far as to argue that certain cave and tomb paintings were the world's first "graphic novels"), comics as we know them today date to the mid-to-late 19th century, with the inclusion of the first comic strips in newspapers. By the 1930s, comics artists in Europe and North America had begun exploring the possibility that a comics-based story, rather than being plotted out in the daily installments of a newspaper comic strip, could be designed to fill the pages of an entire booklet or even book.
While fairly ordinary characters such as teenager Archie Andrews and young reporter Tintin held equal popularity in the earliest decades of the medium, the debuts of Superman and Batman in DC Comics in 1938 and 1939 soon made comic books synonymous with superheroes. Once Timely Comics (the precursor to Marvel) followed suit with Captain America's debut in 1941, the stage was set for an ever-growing assortment of costumed heroes, villains, and sidekicks whose continuing adventures through the decades have led to their present-day status as cultural icons.
Many of the graphic novels that are referenced throughout this guide can be found on the first floor of the Stiern Library, in our Graphic Novels collection adjacent to Popular Fiction. Books in this collection are organized alphabetically by the author's last names.
Graphic novels for children and teens can be found on the second floor in the Juvenile Collection.
Scholarly articles and ebooks related to graphic novels and comics in general can be found via OneSearch, as well as through Academic Search Complete and humanities-oriented databases such as JSTOR.
Comic Books and American Cultural History by 
Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero by 
Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics by 
MetaMaus by 
(Maus, author / illustrator: Art Spiegelman; Pantheon, 1991, vol. 2, p. 26.)
The comics medium has always been home to creators with both talent and ambition. In the superhero genre, what initially began with simplistic tales of crime-fighting gradually built up into elaborately constructed worlds combining elements of mythology and science fiction. Meanwhile, beginning in 1978, in the wake of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion, Wendy and Richard Pini sought to create their own fantasy epic in comics format with the Elfquest series. During this same era, Will Eisner specialized in a much grittier realism in his various comics-based short stories and novels, such as "A Contract With God". The Eisner Awards, which are bestowed annually to the best comics at Comic-Con International, are named in his honor.
However, one of the highest distinctions of any comics creator belongs to Art Spiegelman, whose seminal work Maus became the first (and to date, only) graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Originally serialized throughout the 1980s before being published in two volumes (later combined in a one-volume omnibus), Maus blends comics with oral history through the words of Spiegelman's father Vladek, a Holocaust survivor. Notably, Art depicts himself, his father, and all other Jewish people in the novel as mice, while the Nazis are depicted as cats.
Maus was pivotal in ushering in a new era of respectability for comics and graphic novels, not only due to the accolades it received, but also due to where it had been published: not through a comic book company, but through Pantheon, an imprint of Random House. This opened the door for many other graphic novels and "graphic memoirs" themed around historical events to also achieve mainstream success, including Joe Sacco's Palestine (2001), Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (2000 - 2004; omnibus 2007), and George Takei's They Called Us Enemy (2019).
