Research Guides: Comics and Graphic Novels: Finding Scholarship on Comics

Finding Scholarship on Comics

Since the early 1990s, articles on comics and graphic novels have been appearing in academic journals with increasing frequency.

The Comic Databases section of this page includes a trio of online comic databases provide access to information on comics, graphic novels, manga, creators and characters.
While there is no database exclusively devoted to indexing these articles, the Books, Journals and Databases for Comic Scholarship section of this page includes books, a journal and databases where one can search for academic publications focused on the history, criticism and analysis of comics and graphic novels.
DON'T FORGET CITATIONS!! Allen Ellis, a librarian at Northern Kentucky University, has written a useful primer on how to cite comics and graphic novels in scholarly writing. The Comically Cultured blog has a page with example citations in MLA, APA and Chicago for comics and graphic novels.

Comic Databases

Government Comics Collection
The Government Comics Collection consists of comic books, posters, and comics-related reports and documents, produced by various world governments and agencies. While a large portion of these materials reflects our institutional membership in the U.S. Federal Depository Library Program, materials from the EEU, Canada, and other nations are also included. This database is constantly growing as items become available. Please keep in mind that file sizes may be large.
Grand Comics Database
The Grand Comics Database (GCD) is an ongoing international project to build a detailed comic-book database that will be easy to use and understand, and also easy for contributors to add information to it. This fully searchable and sortable database includes information on creator credits, story details, and other information useful to the comic-book reader, fan, collector, and scholar.
Comic Book Database
The Grand Comics Database (GCD) is a nonprofit, internet-based organization of international volunteers dedicated to building an open database covering all printed comics throughout the world.

Books, Journals and Databases for Comic Scholarship

Books

The following Library of Congress Subject Headings provide a plethora of academic books providing the history, analysis and criticism of comic books and graphic novels.

Journal

ImageTexT is a peer-reviewed, open access journal dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of comics and related media.

Databases

While there is no database exclusively devoted to indexing academic articles about comics and graphic novels, searching in the databases below will return articles published in academic journals centered on literary, visual, and cultural studies.