Special Topic: Recommending Graphic Novels to Newcomers

 I chose to write my special topic paper on a genre I am greatly familiar with: the graphic novel. As I state in the full paper, I believe that lumping all graphic novels together into one umbrella does a disservice to the depth of what the form has to offer. I framed the paper as an introductory guide for librarians to understand the far reaching potential of graphic novels, and provide some appeals that exist within the form that readers from other genres of written-word novels may latch onto.

I began by acknowledging that yes, the American superhero genre is the most represented among graphic novel offerings. Even so, however, there is an advantage to the fact that these characters have had decades worth of stories and creators working on their canons. While action adventure is the most representative of the superhero genre, readers may be surprised how much page space is dedicated to crime procedurals, westerns, high science fiction, even relationship and romances.

Further, the American superhero is not the only subject within the form of graphic novels. There are a myriad of newspaper comic collections, humorous parodies, historical fiction and memoirs. Works by Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, Aaron MacGruder and Bill Waterson are just a few examples. Further,   Japanese manga is even more wide ranging in appeals. Not only are there American superhero style Shonen Jump books like Dragonball, Naruto, or One Piece, there are countless cerebral horror, cozy "slice-of-life", and relationship focused mangas for all kinds of reader preferences.

Finally, some librarians may be surprised at the literary and artistic techniques from other genres they might recognize in graphic novels. The nature of cartooning, cinematography language, even Renaissance art history interests can help the librarian or reader understand the language of the written-word mixed with a sequence of rendered images. There are recognizable literary motifs in character origins, and even in the distribution forms of many classic literary characters, whose adventures were first published in serialized magazines, just like comics.

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