I'd love some recommendations for non-fiction graphic novels. I have become really interested in them as I am working my way through Rick Geary's Victorian Murder work. I intend to read the Persepolis books and the Maus books next. But what else is out there?

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is a good one.

Also, many of Larry Gonick's works are nonfiction, but are not necessarily "graphic novels" depending on your definition. The Cartoon History of the Universe series is delightful.

I found Blankets by Craig Thompson one of the best graphic novels I've read in years.

I agree, Blankets was very good.

non-fiction graphic novels.

No such thing. A "novel", by definition, is fiction.

5>True. I have always wondered what to call the nonfiction variety. I've settled on Graphic Literature as an all inclusive term for comics/graphic novels and their nonfiction counterparts. I'm not completely satisfied with the term and some of it's connotations (mostly the "graphic" bit rather than the "literature" bit). What would you use?

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a non-fiction comic about comics. There's no narrative like the ones you mentioned, but it's a worthwhile history and overview of the comics medium.

A nearby library got in a copy of The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation which is a meant to be an accessible summary of the full 9/11 Commission Report. The little bit I saw looked interesting but I haven't read it yet.

I'd also second the history works by Larry Gonick. They are very amusing and there's enough biographical information to make sections read more like a story rather than a recitation of facts with pictures.

Finally, there's the tagmash of graphic novel, non-fiction that might be worth looking through. Most of the top titles have already been mentioned and some are just prose non-fiction works about comics. Also someone tagged the Calvin and Hobbes Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat collection as non-fiction, which assuming it's not a simple error makes that person very interesting. A search for comics, non-fiction is a very similar list.

Message edited by its author, Sep 5, 2008, 5:23pm.

Thanks so far for the suggestions. Blankets looks really good and I'll look into the Cartoon History books.

5> True, but all the books graphically illustrated as in comic book art are always filed under "graphic novels" at both my library and bookstores whether they are fiction or not. So until 'they' come up with a permanant name for the non-fiction variety I have no other name to call them.

Please keep the recommendations coming!

Is there anybody else out there like Rick Geary doing True Crime in the genre?

I read one about Lizzie Borden a few years back...but I can't remember the title...

Found it! (I love LibraryThing.)

The Borden Tragedy

Alas, it was by Rick Geary, who you already know about.

Yes, PhoenixTerran, I've read that one and he has a whole series of them. Brilliantly done!

Just wish there was something else similar as I'm almost finished all his books.

Reviving this thread with a few books:
Jessica Abel: La Perdida, about her time in Mexico City
Margeurite Abouet: Aya, about her childhood in Africa
Ho Che Anderson: King, Biopic of ML King.
Catel: Kiki de Montparnasse, Biopic of the woman that was the model for the famous photograph of a woman's back as a violin.
Chester Brown: Louis Riel. Biopic. Recommended by Yann Martel.
Everuthing by Jeffrey Brown. All his comics are autobio.
Eddie Campbell: The faith of the artist, autobio.
Julie Doucet: Dirty Plotte, Long time relationship, etc. All autobio.
Debbie Drechsler: Daddy's girl, about the author's childhood with a child-molesting father. Nowhere, more autobio.
Brian Fies: Mom's Cancer, about his mom's fight against cancer.
Ellen Forney: I love Led Zeppelin and Monkey Food, both autobio.
Alex Frederic-Frost: La Primavera, about the first great bicycle race in Italy.
Emmanuel Guibert: The Photographer, about a trip of a photographer to afghanistan. Alan's War, about the life of a WWII GI.
Jay Hosler: Clan Apis, about the life of bees. The Sandwalk adventures, about the life of Charles Darwin in conversations with a myte during his walks behind his house (very funny and educational). Optical Allusion, about optics.
Kaisa Leka: I am not these feet, autobio about a girl who had so much problems with her feet that she decided to have them amputated.
Mark Kalesniko: Why did Pete Duel kill himself?, biopic about Pete Duel, who committed suicide.
James Kochalka: American Elf, short autobio stories about his family. See his website.
Joe Matt: Fair Weather + Peepshow, autobio. Warning: contains lots of sex scenes.
Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics and Reinventing comics, comics about making comics. These are standard books for every comic creator.
Keiji Nakazawa: Barefoot Gen, autobio about the author's memories of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. 8 of 10 books translated so far.
Jim Ottaviani: Two-fisted science, dignifying science, suspended in language and others. Biographies about famous scientists.
Philip Paquet: Louis Armstrong, biopic of the famous trumpet player.
Harvey Pekar: American Splendor and other stories. All autobiographical.
John Porcellino: Diary of a Mosquito man, autobio on his early jobs.
Liz Prince: Will you still love me if I wet the bed?, autobio.
Ted Rall: My war with Brian, Brian being his brother. To Afghanistan and back, road trip.
Joe Sacco: Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde, The Fixer, and all his other works. Joe is the best graphic novel journalist there is. He made graphic journalism a new art form.
Marjanne Satrapi: Embroideries etc. More autobio comics from the author of Persepolis.
Eric Shanower: Age of Bronze. Strictly this is fiction, but it is as close to the non-fiction story of the war in Troye as possible. 3 TPBs so far in an ongoing series. Highly recommended.
James Sturm: Satchel Paige, about the black baseball competition in the USA in the 1930's-1940's.
Bryan Talbot: Alice in Sunderland, about the history of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and its connections with Sunderland. Wonderful book.
Osamu Tezuka: Buddha, 8 books about the life of Buddha. (If the Bible is considered non-fiction, this is the graphic hindu version of it).
Keiko Tobe: With the light, autobio by a mother of an autistic child
Lewis Trondheim: Little Nothings, short autobio comics by one of the best French artists. See the Drawn & quarterly website for a sample.
James Vining: First in space, about the space race in the 1960's.
Aleksander Zograf: Jamming with Aleksander Zograf + Regards from Serbia, comics on the war in Bosnia.

See also my catalog with the tags Biography and Autobiography

Wow thanks >12! Great list with lots that sound fabulous and I'm pleased to say I've managed to find one of them by myself and read it since I originally posted this thread. Louis Riel by Chester Brown. I'll be looking for these.

Hey, gang -- I've got some thoughts I want to share in response to many of the posts above, especially #5-8, and the discussion about the need for terms to distinguish various types of Graphic Novels.

I really balk over those two words, "non" and "fiction." I agree that there are works, like Maus for example, that are far closer to that category than, say, Watchmen. Still, Maus relates the story of the author's father, and often does so with much embellishment. Even Art Spiegelman has spoken to the level of accuracy or the amount of truth, versus content, versus his own creative additions, contained in his two books. I think, ultimately, that whether the word "fiction" has the prefixed "non" before it or not, that either category - and the works that would list beneath each one - are, to one degree or another, just plain "fiction."

Building from there, then, when tagging or classifying graphic novels (in general), I don't see the need to break the category down into types of graphic novels, fiction or non / less fiction. I think that the medium itself - being one of graphic storytelling, regardless of subject matter - is the key qualifier, the one that separates Persepolis from To Kill a Mockingbird.

On the matter of Calvin and Hobbes: I agree - very interesting. If I'm remembering correctly, the overall story is an allegory for the author's own childhood. In that sense, and along the same lines as Maus, the similarities are apparent. And debatable. Still, when all is said and done, aren't the vast majority of (if not all) stories told autobiographical to some degree? Any writer writes from what they know, and what their interests are. As while it's that same degree that is at contention here, I think in the case of Calvin and his pet tiger, the label of "non-fiction" ultimately stretches the point.

One distinction that might be helpful here is the differentiation between what a true "Graphic Novel" is compared to what a Trade Paperback (or "trade") is. Colloquially, at your local bookseller, and everywhere in the mainstream media, trades are equated with graphic novels because they both are in "book form," having a spine/binding, look good on a coffee table or bookshelf, and on the inside, read like comics. The significant -- okay, the HUGE -- difference is that graphic novels are Original comics works created especially and only for the format in which they are then published. Trades are a collected volume of reprinted, earlier published stories, generally an aggregate story-arc from a monthly comic book title printed in pamphlet form. The majority of the books found in the Graphic Novels section at the local bookstore are not graphic novels, they're trades.

Interestingly, most booksellers classify the Manga books differently than they do all the American books / graphic novels. And really, by their own logic, there really is no difference.

The Manga works and the trades are related; graphic novels deserve their own, special shelf.

Papiervisje, great list: really appreciate the time you took. Based on several titles you include that I love, I will pursue others you mention. In particular, I adored Alice in Sunderland and Age of Bronze, and have had Joe Sacco and Tezuka on my "I wonder ..." list for awhile now.

I've also been really curious about the New York series ... by Eisner? Would be very interested to hear what anyone here thinks about it.

Finally, I also really found Alan Moore's From Hell for the mix of history, geography, and so forth. Many might protest such a work doesn't fit the list, but I wonder if there are recommendations along those lines, too: not just true crime, but where a fictional story contains lots of factual information. (In a way that every novel doesn't, I mean, not sure how else to put it.)

Anyway, this is a great thread and I've enjoyed reading what others recommend.

Message edited by its author, Sep 8, 2009, 11:13pm.