A graph that is unbroken a biography

Put most simply, graphic biographies are books that tell the story of another person's (or people's) life in the form of comics. But, as so often in a scholarly project, each of these key terms needs some explaining.

Graphic biographies are books: This project focuses on print graphic biographies produced from within the North American and European alternative comics scenes. So, comics about real people's lives in the form of pamphlets, serials, or web pages are related but not what we're looking at.

A graph that is unbroken a biography

Comics scholarship often distinguishes between mass market, mainstream, or “superhero” comics and more literary, independent, and “alternative” comics. This divide helps in studying generic, narrative, and visual connections and confluences, as well as divergent conditions of production, distribution, and reception.

That said, a full study of print graphic biography (web comics are another topic entirely for future study) must recognize both sides of the main