Emerson College Library: Comics and Graphic Novels: Best Bets

Browse the Collection

Comics and graphic novels are shelved at PN6700-6790, which is by far the easiest way to browse them.

Encyclopedias

The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel

The world encyclopedia of comics (7 vols.)

Encyclopedia of Black Comics [electronic resource]

Comic book encyclopedia : the ultimate guide to characters, graphic novels, writers, and artists in the comic book universe

Encyclopedia of comic books and graphic novels

2 Volumes

St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture [electronic resource]

The superhero book : the ultimate encyclopedia of comic-book icons and Hollywood heroes

Multisearch

Multisearch Hacks
Get faster, more focused results with these search strategies. Applicable to Multisearch, and to other EBSCO-brand library databases.

Multisearch Help
Sometimes you need to go straight to the source. EBSCO's Help menu offers authoritative instruction on creating a strong search; auto-formatting a citation; emailing, batch-emailing, printing, or saving an article; saving articles in a temporary folder; saving a search or email alert for newly published articles on your designated topic, and more.

Databases

Journal articles present theories, ongoing conversations, and debates among scholars. Because the scope of an article is narrower than a book, your database search should be specific. For example, try (comic* or "graphic novel) and society.

JSTOR & ArtStor
Complete full-text runs of 10,000+ top scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Also includes ebooks and primary source documents. For expanded JSTOR access, register for a free eCard through Boston Public Library. For help, see the JSTOR users' guides.
Literature Resource Center
Provides information on thousands of authors and their works across literary disciplines and timeframes, including plot summaries, literary criticism articles, author biographies, and the full text of literary journals, short poems, stories, novels, and author interviews.
MLA International Bibliography
Provides a subject index for books and articles published on modern languages, literature, folklore, and linguistics.
Project MUSE, Arts and Humanities Collection
Full text of over 100 journals in classics, culture, education, film, performing arts, history, literature, religion, and theater.
Proquest Central
A collection of databases providing access to over 8,000 titles in full-text. Subjects covered extensively include business and economics, health and medicine, news and world affairs, technology, social sciences and more. For dissertations, select Dissertations from the "Publication type:" dropdown.

Comic Books: Research and Reference

"Nick Bertozzi explains the role of research in a comic book artist's creative process."

Websites

Grand Comics Database
A volunteer project with the stated goal to document and index all comic books for the free use of scholars, historians, researchers, and fans of all types. Over 186,000 cover images.
Lambiek Comiclopedia
Illustrated compendium of over 10,000 comic artists from around the world. Search for artists, books, strips or comic characters.