Graphic Novels
Read a graphic novel.
June 1, 2021
waGraphic novels—they’re not just superheros any more! From touching memoirs to hilarious webcomics, fantastic adventures, and even historical accounts… graphic novels have something for everyone.
We’ve gathered a smattering of each genre, but you can also browse graphic novels in the catalog. We recently moved the graphic novels to give them more room; they are now located by the adult fiction, right around the corner from the DVD section.
This list is part of the 2021 Adult Summer Reading program.
Adler
Lavie Tidhar
For Sherlock, there was only ever one woman—now Irene Adler is on a mission to take down Moriarty! It’s the League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen, as Adler teams up with a host of famous female faces from science, history and literature to defeat the greatest criminal mastermind of all time!
And Now I Spill the Family Secrets
Margaret Kimball
A beautifully illustrated memoir and empathetic investigation into a family’s history with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and one woman’s quest to find healing among what remains
Animus
Antoine J.D. Revoy
The residents of a quiet Japanese neighborhood have slowly come to realize that inauspicious, paranormal forces are at play in the most unlikely of places: the local playground. Two friends, a young boy and girl, resolve to exorcise the evil that inhabit it, including a snaggle-toothed monster. In Animus, a beautiful but spooky young adult graphic novel of everyday hauntings, Antoine Revoy delivers an eerie tale inspired by the Japanese and French comics of his childhood
Asadora! 1
Naoki Urasawa
A deadly typhoon, a mysterious creature and a girl who won’t quit. In 2020, a large creature rampages through Tokyo, destroying everything in its path. In 1959, Asa Asada, a spunky young girl from a huge family in Nagoya, is kidnapped for ransom—and not a soul notices. When a typhoon hits Nagoya, Asa and her kidnapper must work together to survive. But there’s more to her kidnapper and this storm than meets the eye. When Asa’s mother goes into labor yet again, Asa runs off to find a doctor. But no one bats an eye when she doesn’t return—not even as a storm approaches Nagoya. Forgotten yet again, Asa runs into a burglar and tries to stop him on her own, a decision that leads to an unlikely alliance.
Barely Functional Adult
It’ll All Make Sense Eventually
Meichi Ng
a hilarious and poignant [autobiographical] collection of beautifully illustrated short stories that perfectly captures the best and worst of adult life and the joy, terror, fun, and pain that comes with learning to navigate its complexities and conundrums
The Black Panther Party
A Graphic Novel History
David F. Walker
Founded in Oakland, California, in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was a radical political organization that stood in defiant contrast to the mainstream civil rights movement. This gripping illustrated history explores the impact and significance of the Panthers, from their social, educational, and healthcare programs that were designed to uplift the Black community to their battle against police brutality through citizen patrols and frequent clashes with the FBI, which targeted the Party from its outset. Using dramatic comic book-style retellings and illustrated profiles of key figures, The Black Panther Party captures the major events, people, and actions of the Party, as well as their cultural and political influence and enduring legacy.
Brazen
Penelope Bagieu
With her characteristic wit and dazzling drawings, celebrated graphic novelist Penelope Bagieu profiles the lives of these feisty female role models, some world famous, some little known. From Nellie Bly to Mae Jemison or Josephine Baker to Naziq al-Abid, the stories in this comic biography are sure to inspire the next generation of rebel ladies.
Check, Please! #Hockey
Ngozi Ukazu
Y’all… I might not be ready for this. I may be a former junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and very talented amateur pâtissier, but being a freshman on the Samwell University hockey team is a whole new challenge. It’s nothing like co-ed club hockey back in Georgia! First of all? There’s checking. And then, there is Jack… You see the problem.
The Grande Odalisque
Bastien Vives
Carole & Alex, best friends for years, are now literal partners in crime and planning their biggest heist yet: to steal the classic Ingres painting Le Grande Odalisque from the Louvre. With the help of Sam, their new getaway driver, the trio feels like they could take on the French Special Forces—and they just might need to.
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood
The story is iconic: In the Republic of Gilead, a Handmaid named Offred lives in the home of the Commander, to the purpose that she become pregnant with his child. Stripped of her most basic freedoms, (work, property, her own name), Offred remembers a different time, not so long ago, when she was valuable for more than her viable ovaries, when she was mother to a daughter she could keep, and when she and her husband lived and loved as equals. Darkly prescient, scathingly sarcastic, and eminently frightening, The Handmaid’s Tale has only gained relevance since it was originally published, and remains one of the most powerful, widely read stories of our times. This illustrated edition is a must-have for Atwood’s growing legions of fans
Home After Dark
David Small
Thirteen-year-old Russell Pruitt, abandoned by his mother, follows his father to dilapidated 1950s Marshfield, California where he is forced to fend for himself against a ring of malicious bullies.
Hyperbole and a Half
Allie Brosh
Collects autobiographical, illustrated essays and cartoons from the author’s popular blog and related new material that humorously and candidly deals with her own idiosyncrasies and battles with depression.
I Was Their American Dream
Malaka Gharib
The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents’ ideals, learning to code-switch between her family’s Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. Malaka Gharib’s triumphant graphic memoir brings to life her teenage antics and illuminates earnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised. Malaka’s story is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream.
In Love & Pajamas
Catana Chetwynd
Why bother getting out of bed when you could stay bundled up with that special someone and a book of cozy, cute comics? Chetwynd’s collection captures the honest, playful, and relatable snapshots of romantic life.
In Waves
A.J. Dungo
In this visually arresting graphic novel, surfer and illustrator AJ Dungo remembers his late partner, her battle with cancer, and their shared love of surfing that brought them strength throughout their time together. With his passion for surfing uniting many narratives, he intertwines his own story with those of some of the great heroes of surf in a rare work of nonfiction that is as moving as it is fascinating.
Monsters
Barry Windsor-Smith
In this pen-and-ink graphic novel, in 1964, Bobby Bailey is recruited for a U.S. military experimental genetics program that was discovered in Nazi Germany 20 years prior. His only ally, Sergeant McFarland, intervenes to try to protect him, which sets off a chain of events that spin out of everyone’s control. As the titular monsters multiply, becoming real and metaphorical, literal and ironic, the story reaches its emotional and moral reckoning. Windsor-Smith has been working on this passion project for more than 35 years, and Monsters is part intergenerational family drama, part espionage thriller, and part metaphysical journey. Trauma, fate, conscience, and redemption are just a few of the themes that intersect in the most ambitious (and intense) graphic novel of Windsor-Smith’s career
Pulp
Ed Brubaker
Max Winters, a pulp writer in 1930s New York, finds himself drawn into a story not unlike the tales he churns out at five cents a word—tales of a Wild West outlaw dispensing justice with a six-gun. But will Max be able to do the same when pursued by bank robbers, Nazi spies, and enemies from his past?
The Secret to Superhuman Strength
Alison Bechdel
Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination, from childhood to adulthood, with every fitness craze to come down the pike: from Jack LaLanne in the 60s (“Outlandish jumpsuit! Cantaloupe-sized guns!”) to the existential oddness of present-day spin class. Readers will see their athletic or semi-active pasts flash before their eyes through an ever-evolving panoply of running shoes, bicycles, skis, and sundry other gear. But the more Bechdel tries to improve herself, the more her self appears to be the thing in her way. She turns for enlightenment to Eastern philosophers and literary figures, including Beat writer Jack Kerouac, whose search for self-transcendence in the great outdoors appears in moving conversation with the author’s own. This gifted artist and not-getting-any-younger exerciser comes to a soulful conclusion. The secret to superhuman strength lies not in six-pack abs, but in something much less clearly defined: facing her own non-transcendent but all-important interdependence with others.
Solutions and Other Problems
Allie Brosh
Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh’s childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life.
Stranger Things. Into the Fire
Jody Houser
Beyond Hawkins Lab, Starcourt Mall, Dungeons and Dragons, Monsters, and Mindflayers, the powerful children that have escaped from Hawkins Lab are out in the world, trying to live normal lives, but it comes at a steep cost.
The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite
gerard Way
In an inexplicable worldwide event, forty-seven extraordinary children were spontaneously born by women who had previously shown no signs of pregnancy. Millionaire inventor Reginald Hargreeves adopted seven of the children; when asked why, his only explanation was, ‘To save the world.’ These seven children form The Umbrella Academy, a dysfunctional family of superheroes with bizarre powers. Their first adventure at the age of ten pits them against an erratic and deadly Eiffel Tower, piloted by the fearsome zombie-robot Gustave Eiffel. Nearly a decade later, the team disbands, but when Hargreeves unexpectedly dies, these disgruntled siblings reunite just in time to save the world once again.
Welcome to the New World
Jake Halpern, Michael Sloan
After escaping a Syrian prison, Ibrahim Aldabaan and his family fled the country to seek protection in America. Among the few refugees to receive visas, they finally landed in JFK airport on November 8, 2016, Election Day. The family had reached a safe harbor, but woke up to the world of Donald Trump and a Muslim ban that would sever them from the grandmother, brothers, sisters, and cousins stranded in exile in Jordan. Welcome to the New World tells the Aldabaans’ story. Resettled in Connecticut with little English, few friends, and even less money, the family of seven strive to create something like home. As a blur of language classes, job-training programs, and the fearsome first days of high school (with hijab) give way to normalcy, the Aldabaans are lulled into a sense of security. A white van cruising slowly past the house prompts some unease, which erupts into full terror when the family receives a death threat and is forced to flee and start all over yet again. The America in which the Aldabaans must make their way is by turns kind and ignorant, generous and cruel, uplifting and heartbreaking
We’Ll Soon Be Home Again
Jessica Bab Bonde
Based on interviews with six Holocaust survivors, these first-person point of view stories relate living through the de-humanization and starvation in concentration camps and the industrial-scale mass murder in extermination camps.
The Wicked + the Divine
Kieron Gillen
Every ninety years, twelve gods return as young people. They are loved. They are hated. In two years, they are all dead. It’s happening now. It’s happening again.