Should comics/graphic novels be categorized as fiction?

In the genre stats https://www.librarything.com/stats//genre
there is a Fiction VS Non-fiction graph. Mine has quite a few as "Not set". I clicked on that ready to put some data into the system but I've noticed many of these works are comics , mangas, graphic novels and properly categorized as so.

Is that all these works need or should in addition have the "Fiction and Literature" classification? (that's what would mark them as set in that graph)

>1 jordicarres: There’s plenty of graphic nonfiction (Fun Home and Persepolis immediately come to mind), so I think the fiction-or-nonfiction determination needs to be made on a book-by-book basis.

Some biography and historical comic books are non-fiction, so it really depends, although most are fiction. I usually pick the big header of F or NF and then Graphic novel and then any sub-genre like mystery or horror.

I have known a few libraries that put all graphic novels under non-fiction in their system. I still haven't the foggiest notion why. I agree that it should be case-by-case, Fun Home also came to mind immediately for me upon reading the title. I certainly wouldn't leave them uncategorised for being graphic novels.

>1 jordicarres:

Graphic novels/comics aren’t a genre; they are a format. Similar to pop-up books, they encompass a variety of genres.

For example:
In the Shadow of No Towers - history
Fun Home - memoir (or autobiography)
Important artifacts and personal property from the collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, including books, street fashion, and jewelry - art

Frankly, I prefer the term “graphic works”, because “graphic novel” is misleadingly used for things that aren’t novels at all.

ETA: I just noticed that in the New York Times Book Review section, they are called "graphic books", which works for me.

>4 GraceCollection: I am not a cataloger, but I notice that there's a Dewey/Melvil categorization which puts all "Comic books, graphic novels, fotonovelas, cartoons, caricatures, comic strips" under "Arts and recreation", which is generally a "nonfiction" category. Library of Congress does have an equivalent category, but puts it under "Literature (General)".

Of course, there's nothing *stopping* any given library from saying "graphic non-fiction ought to be next to other books on its subject, not next to graphic fiction". But then, there's nothing stopping them from saying "people who read graphic novels might like to know there's graphic non-fiction too". (Or "people who read graphic non-fiction are more interested in format than subject; all graphic nonfiction should be together.") It all depends on how you're thinking about your particular users.

>6 hipdeep: That's true, but my argument has always been that fiction could be put under non-fiction (in the 800s for Dewey) if you wanted to, but the average user wouldn't look for it there when browsing the shelves. I feel the same way about graphic novels (the ones that are truly novels, ie fiction).

>5 lilithcat: completely agree. It bother me - small scale i know - everytime I classify a work that graphic novel is at the same level as non-fiction or history. One of these are not like the others.
Last year (I think), there was a Librarything list of the month of best non-fiction graphic novels. I felt very virteous for not picking a fight over that oxymoron.

>8 amberwitch: Last year (I think), there was a Librarything list of the month of best non-fiction graphic novels. I felt very virteous for not picking a fight over that oxymoron.

From a thorough nitpicker....

This is more complicated than it sounds. Even the word "novel" has more than one use. If you're a publisher -- especially a publisher of magazine fiction -- it's a length -- something of 50,000 words or more.

If you're a literary historian, it's a genre -- the genre of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela. By this definition, many things called "novels" are not novels -- including both the Harry Potter sequence and The Lord of the Rings, which are romances, not novels. (In the case of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien was deliberately setting out to write a romance, not a novel.)

So I agree with those who object to calling publications in graphic format a "novel" -- but I object for a different reason than fictional status: I object on the grounds of length. :-)

>9 waltzmn: Ah, so we should have a lengthy discussion rather than the normal five-minute argument :-)

>10 bnielsen: Ah, so we should have a lengthy discussion rather than the normal five-minute argument :-)

Works for me, he said, un-novelistically. :-)

Thanks for all the answers.
The conclusion is that is Fiction/NonFiction is orthogonal to graphic novel so a fiction graphic novel should have both

>12 jordicarres:

"should have both": do you mean both = Fiction and NonFiction, or Fiction and comics/graphic novels?

>9 waltzmn: that is really interesting! I admit, I hadn’t thought so much about length in this connection, although I’ve often wondered that books, which I would consider novel length, like ~200 pages, are called novellas in english.

In general, a full length graphic novel (an album) is 48-64 pages in Denmark (probably a French/ Belgian/Dutch convention since a lot of our graphic novels are translated from those languages), and so I consider that a novel-length for graphic works (examples: Heroes of the equinox, Corto Maltese in Siberia) Whereas I consider Erindringer fra fremtiden or Corto Maltese: The Ethiopian to be short story collections, and Dagbogsdage or Little Nemo in Slumberland to be comic strips.

>12 jordicarres: Yes, or even more than 2 if you want! For example, I have Bea Wolf in the Fiction, Graphic Novel, and Poetry genres, and my nonfiction graphic narratives have at least 3 genres attached and often more.