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Rhode Island School of Design

Comics and Graphic Novels: Comics + Graphic Novels

Essential Resources

Online databases

Use these online reference sources to locate articles about comics and graphic novels, cartoonist biographies and images.
Access at library.risd.edu > Resources > Reference

Article Databases
Academic Search Premier
Art Full Text/Art Retrospective
Ask Art
LexisNexis Academic

Image Databases
ARTstor

Find Comics in the RISD/Athenaeum catalog

Start with a Keyword search:
an asterisk (*) truncates the word

comic
comic book
comic strip
comic*
graphic novel
manga
superhero

When you see a relevant record, select it to view the full record, then look at the subject headings.

for example, a keyword search for "manga" will bring up a number of books about manga, but not a lot of actual manga.

Selecting the full record for "One Thousand Years of Manga", will reveal its subject category of: "Comic Books Strips Etc Japan History and Criticism".
Clicking on this subject will bring you to all the nearby relevant subjects, such as, "Comic Books Strips Etc Japan" - which has a good number of true manga samples.

Repeat this process to come up with a broader variety of possible subject categories.

Browse the NC1400's to view the bulk of our collection, but be aware that sequential art can be classified in many different ways. Woodcut novels by Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward, for example, are classified under NE (NE = "Print Media" -- NC = "Graphic Arts" in the LC system).

International Comics

ASIFA - Hollywood Animation Archive
International Animated Film Society/ Association Internationale du Film D'Animation
http://www.animationarchive.org/bio/index.html

http://www.animationarchive.org/

designinform
Choose different groupings of international artists from the list of links on the left. Includes "Comics Artists - International",  "Cartoonists - International", "Illustrators - International", and more.
http://www.designinform.co.uk/links25.htm

Festival International de la Bande Dessinée
Angoulême, France
http://en.bdangouleme.com/

Lambiek.net
Entering the name of a country in the search box will generally retrieve quite a few artists from that country. Bios and art samples for each result. Also includes extensive history of Dutch comics artists.
http://www.lambiek.net/artists/

On the Web

ASIFA - Hollywood Animation Archive
Great resource for images. Animation, comics and illustration.
http://www.animationarchive.org/

 The Comics Journal
Arts magazine about comics.
http://www.tcj.com/

ComicsResearch.org
Primarily for monographs about comics. Many useful links.
http://comicsresearch.org/

Comics Research Bibliography
Books and citations to articles about comics.
http://www.rpi.edu/~bulloj/comxbib.html

The Grand Comics Database
Very extensive index of comic books. High quality cover images of many comic books.
http://www.comics.org/

Lambiek.net
Web encyclopedia of cartoonists. Bios and art samples.
http://www.lambiek.net/artists/

The Time Collection
Fulltext articles about comics from Time Magazine: 1923-2009
http://www.time.com/time/archive/collections/0,21428,c_comics,00.shtml#strips_artists

Don Markstein’s Toonopedia
Web encyclopedia of cartoon characters.
http://www.toonopedia.com/

 

 

 

News Blogs

News blogs about comics

The Beat
http://www.comicsbeat.com/

The Comics Reporter
http://www.comicsreporter.com/

¡Journalista!
http://archives.tcj.com/journalista/