Non-fiction comics, also known asgraphic non-fiction, isnon-fiction in thecomics medium, embracing a variety of formats fromcomic strips totrade paperbacks.
Traditionally, comic strips have long offered factual material in this category, notablyRipley's Believe It or Not!,John Hix'sStrange as It Seems, Ralph Graczak'sOur Own Oddities,King Features'Heroes of American History, Gordon Johnston'sIt Happened in Canada, and others.Dick's Adventures in Dreamland was another attempt by King Features to teach history with comics. Clayton Knight created a strip about aviators,The Hall of Fame of the Air (1935–40), later collected in a book.Texas History Movies, which began on October 5, 1926, inThe Dallas Morning News, received praise from educators, as didAmerica's Best Buy: The Louisiana Purchase, a 1953 daily strip in theNew Orleans States, distributed nationally by theRegister and Tribune Syndicate, which also handledWill Eisner'sThe Spirit supplement for Sunday newspapers.[1][2]
Contemporary nonfiction comic strips includeBiographic,Health Capsules,The K Chronicles, andYou Can with Beakman and Jax.
Non-fiction was published in numerous comic books in the 1940s, notablyPicture News (Lafayette Street Corporation),True Comics (Parents' Magazine Press),Heroic Comics (Eastern Color Printing),It Really Happened andReal Life Comics (bothStandard/Better/Nedor). A notable scripter of this material for 1940s comic books was novelistPatricia Highsmith, who wrote forReal Fact (DC Comics),Real Heroes (also Parents' Magazine Press), andTrue Comics.[3]
A notable nonfiction comic from the 1950s was the 1957 one-shotMartin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, a 16-page comic book aboutMartin Luther King Jr.,Rosa Parks, and theMontgomery bus boycott, published and distributed by theFellowship of Reconciliation.[4][5]
Ever since the 1950s, theFederal Reserve Bank of New York has produced free, educational comic books. The stories feature fictional characters but contain lessons aboutfinancial literacy and the work of the Fed. One title,Once Upon a Dime, has been produced a number of times in different iterations, updating its content as society has evolved.[6]
Fitzgerald Publishing Co. produced theGolden Legacy line of educationalblack historycomic books from 1966 to 1976.Golden Legacy produced biographies of such notable figures asHarriet Tubman,Crispus Attucks,Benjamin Banneker,Matthew Henson,Alexandre Dumas,Frederick Douglass,Robert Smalls,Joseph Cinqué,Thurgood Marshall,Martin Luther King Jr.,Alexander Pushkin,Lewis Howard Latimer, andGranville Woods.Golden Legacy was the brainchild ofAfrican American accountantBertram Fitzgerald, who also wrote seven of the volumes. Many of the other contributors to theGolden Legacy series were also black, includingJoan Bacchus andTom Feelings. Other notable contributors includedDon Perlin andTony Tallarico.[7]
Harvey Pekar's originally self-published comic book seriesAmerican Splendor (published from 1976 to 2008) "helped change the appreciation for, and perceptions of, the graphic novel, the drawn memoir, [and] the autobiographical comic narrative."[8] He was the first author to publicly distribute "memoir comic books."[9]
Larry Gonick (The Cartoon History of the Universe) produced graphic non-fiction about science and history for more than 30 years.
Joe Sacco's nine-issue seriesPalestine (Fantagraphics, 1993–1995) — about his experiences in theWest Bank and theGaza Strip in December 1991 and January 1992 — broke new ground in the realm ofcomics journalism.
Other contemporary nonfiction comic books include theFor Beginners series andThe Manga Guides.A growing number ofgraphic medicine comics have been written over the past decade by those who revealed their personal experiences with their own or another person’s illness or disability.[10]
Researchers have analyzed the truthfulness or authenticity of graphic non-fiction and graphic biographies. According to Robert V. Bullough Jr, and Stefinee Pinnegar, the reader expects the truth,[11] but comparative studies concluded that graphics are less objective than textual biographies due to the pictorial material.[12] Textual biographies present more information about the subject, while graphic biographies focus more on individual events, statements, and emotions, and present them more appealingly.[12]
Since the publication ofArt Spiegelman'sMaus in 1986,[13] there have been many non-fiction "graphic novels" published in the realms of history, biography, autobiography, education, and journalism. Francisca Goldsmith, writing in theSchool Library Journal in 2008, assembled a "list of essential titles for high schoolers" and reviewed graphic nonfiction by a variety of creators, includingRick Geary (Treasury of Victorian Murder),Harvey Pekar (Students for a Democratic Society),Stan Mack (The Story of the Jews),Joe Sacco (Palestine),Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis),Osamu Tezuka (Buddha) andHoward Zinn (A People’s History of American Empire).[14]
Other examples areThe 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (2006) andAfter 9/11: America’s War on Terror (2007), both bySid Jacobson andErnie Colón.[14]Hill & Wang, which published the9/11 books, has published several other works of graphic non-fiction, includingTed Rall'sAfter We Kill You We Will Welcome You as Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan.
InA.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (2009),Josh Neufeld documented true stories of survival duringHurricane Katrina as witnessed by a diverse group of New Orleanians.
InItalian Winter (2010),Davide Toffolo documented a story of two children fromSlovenia inFascist concentration camp in Italy.
InMarch (2013), U.S. Rep.John Lewis recalled his childhood, his entry into the American civil rights movement and his first encounter with Martin Luther King Jr., and his first experiences with nonviolent resistance.[15]March: Book One (2013) was followed byBook Two (2015) andBook Three (2016).
InThe Forgotten Man Graphic Edition: A New History of the Great Depression (2014),Amity Shlaes recounted her earlier history of America'sGreat Depression.
Seven Stories Press has publishedTed Rall's comic-format biographies of Edward Snowden (Snowden), Bernie Sanders (Sanders) and Pope Francis (Francis: The People's Pope).
Red Quill Books has published a series of political, non-fiction comics including an illustrated version of theCommunist Manifesto (2010-2015), amanga version ofDas Capital (2012), and theLast Days of Che Guevara.
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