[Ads-l] Nonfiction Graphic Novel

[Dave Wilton]

Does "graphic novel" extend to non-fiction, or is this just another example of novel = book?

"MIDWAY THROUGH the new graphic novel Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War, authors Jonathan Fetter-Vorm and Ari Kelman interrupt their sparsely sketched and lightly colored drawings with a monochrome photograph of a rebel corpse."

--Kenyon Gradert, "A Helluva Lot Easier When They’re Dead: Picturing the Civil War in Comic, Collage, and Corpse," Los Angeles Review of Books, 27 April 2015.

What do you call a work like this? "Comic book" gives the impression of a non-serious work. "Illustrated book" conveys that the medium is primarily text with some pictures.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org