Graphic Novels and Comics

How to find graphic novels and resources about graphic novels, including history and criticism.

Getting Started

This guide highlights some of the graphic novels, comic books, manga, and anime collections at the UTSA Libraries.

To find more:

  • Go directly to the PN6700 bookshelves in the library to browse the majority of the collection. The children's books and young adult books are spread throughout the Juvenile Literature collection.
  • Try searching "comic book", "graphic novel", manga, or anime in the QuickSearch box to find more titles.

Looking for titles that we don't have?  Try requesting them through the Get It For Me button on the library homepage or suggest them to the librarians linked on this page!

Highlights

Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics

Whether good or evil, beautiful or ugly, smart or downright silly, able-bodied or differently abled, gay or straight, male or female, young or old, Latinx superheroes in mainstream comic book stories are few and far between. It is as if finding the Latinx presence in the DC and Marvel worlds requires activation of superheroic powers. Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics blasts open barriers with a swift kick. It explores deeply and systematically the storyworld spaces inhabited by brown superheroes in mainstream comic book storyworlds: print comic books, animation, TV, and film. It makes visible and lets loose the otherwise occluded and shackled. Leaving nothing to chance, it sheds light on how creators (authors, artists, animators, and directors) make storyworlds that feature Latinos/as, distinguishing between those that we can and should evaluate as well done and those we can and should evaluate as not well done. The foremost expert on Latinx comics, Frederick Luis Aldama guides us through the full archive of all the Latinx superheros in comics since the 1940s. Aldama takes us where the superheroes live--the barrios, the hospitals, the school rooms, the farm fields--and he not only shows us a view to the Latinx content, sometimes deeply embedded, but also provokes critical inquiry into the way storytelling formats distill and reconstruct real Latinos/as. Thoroughly entertaining but seriously undertaken, Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics allows us to truly see how superhero comic book storyworlds are willfully created in ways that make new our perception, thoughts, and feelings.  

Piled Higher and Deeper

This book collects five years of Piled Higher and Deeper, the comic strip about grad student life, first printed in the Stanford Daily.

Black Panther

A new era begins for the Black Panther! MacArthur Genius and National Book Award-winning writer T-Nehisi Coates (BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME) takes the helm, confronting T'Challa with a dramatic upheaval in Wakanda that will make leading the African nation tougher than ever before. When a superhuman terrorist group that calls itself The People sparks a violent uprising, the land famed for its incredible technology and proud warrior traditions will be thrown into turmoil. If Wakanda is to survive, it must adapt--but can its monarch, one in a long line of Black Panthers, survive the necessary change? Heavy lies the head that wears the cowl! COLLECTING: Black Panther 1-4, Fantastic Four (1961) 52

Tiger vs. Nightmare

Tiger is a lucky kid: She has a monster living under her bed. This monster arrived when Tiger was just a baby. It was supposed to scare her--after all, that's what monsters do. But Tiger was just too cute! Now, Tiger and Monster are best friends. But Monster is a monster, and it needs to scare something. So every night, Monster stands guard and scares all of Tiger's nightmares away. This arrangement works out perfectly, until a nightmare arrives that's too big and scary for even Monster. Only teamwork and a lot of bravery can chase this nightmare away.