Graphic novels, comic books, and Herman Melville

Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick has lent itself to many adaptations and abridgements over the years, including a number of treatments in comic book/graphic novel form. Special Collections contains comic books based on Moby Dick dating as far back as the early 1940’s, and actively collects modern graphic novel retellings of Melville’s masterpiece.

Some of our newest acquisitions include an adaptation by Eisner award-nominated graphic novelist Rod Espinosa, the 2008 Marvel Illustrated Moby Dick adapted by Roy Thomas and Pascal Alixe, and Sam Ita’s Moby Dick: a Pop-up Book. The Herman Melville Collection also contains recent graphic novel adaptations of Moby Dick by award-winning comic artists Lew Sayre Schwartz and Bill Sienkiewicz.

To find these types of books in the library catalog, perform a genre search using the term “graphic novels,” “comic books” or “toy and moveable books.” You can limit your search to HBLL Special Collections, or, if you click on the advanced search link, you will be taken to a form where you can limit your search further to the Herman Melville Collection.