The graphic novel, a story presented as a fully illustrated narrative, is a high-art version of the comic strip. Like the true novel, the graphic novel treats serious subjects, but using images together with words combined with pictures. The proceedings of a conference on the graphic novel held at the University of Leuven, May 2000, The Graphic Novel contains studies of such well-known graphic novels as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Jacques Tardi’s visual narratives, and some lesser-known writers, and several essays devoted to the theory of the relation between word and image in these strips James Reibman, Ed Tan, Sue Vice, Ole Frahm, and Gene Kannenberg discuss the representation of the Holocaust by Spiegelman; Laurie Kaplan, Anke Gilleir, and Michael Hein deal with images of World War One in graphic novels; Marni Sandweiss, Heike Elisabeth Jüngst, Jeffrey Lewis, Jean-Louis Tilleuil, and Libbie McQuillan present lesser-known graphic novels; and, finally, Mario Saraceni, Jack Post, and Patrick Maynard deal with theoretical issues arising in such books. This publication thus provides a rich survey of contemporary scholarship. In general, the graphic novel (and its close relative, the comic strip) have been much less discussed by academics than either visual art or literature. There are...