Fully Paneled: Compelling and Engaging Nonfiction Comics

For those who are less familiar with comics, the idea that comics can be nonfiction may be surprising. But it’s true: comics are a format rather than a genre, so they can tell both true and imagined stories through engaging art, dialogue, and design. There’s no limit to what comics can do. As comics have continued to grow in mainstream reading culture–including libraries and in schools–so, too, have the options available to us when it comes to nonfiction comics. Nonfiction comics can help break down complex ideas for readers. Nonfiction comics can explain things visually, which is especially beneficial for readers who prefer visual cues to understand.

But nonfiction comics can also be downright fun and innovative. They can include biographies and memoirs that share stories about and from real people living interesting lives. Nonfiction comics are ripe for broadening our horizons on so many topics. Among some of the most compelling nonfiction entries in recent years? The growth and expansion of graphic medicine, which explores various health and medical topics in a format that’s both accessible and, often, incredibly relatable for readers. It was Lucy Knisley’s Kid Gloves that helped me in the weeks after I gave birth, as she so accurately captured the horrors and mysteries surrounding postpartum preeclampsia.

It’s pedantic, but one thing that makes it challenging for new readers to discover the wondrous world of nonfiction comics is that many are referred to as graphic novels. Graphic novels is a term used interchangeably with comics, but the second word there, novel, suggests the content is fiction, rather than nonfiction. The term nonfiction comic is a bit more precise, but as you’ll see as you wander more deeply into the waters of this category and format, many works of nonfiction are given the label of “graphic novel.”

The 13th task for the 2026 Read Harder Challenge will challenge some readers with a new format and/or a new category of reading, and it’s also one that will absolutely delight newcomers and old-heads: read a nonfiction comic. Find below an array of nonfiction comics across categories, topics, and themes. They include nonfiction comics published for younger readers–and totally appropriate for adult readers–as well as a selection of memoirs, history, and more. This list is far from comprehensive. It’s meant to be a sampling platter, with both backlist picks and newer releases.

Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women’s Fight For Their Rights by Mikki Kendall and A. D’Amico This graphic primer is essential reading for understanding the fight for suffrage and women’s rights more broadly. Where so many books focus heavily on the work of white women, Kendall highlights women of color who made tremendous strides not only in the fight for the right to vote but also in labor, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, abolition, and more. An outstanding look at the past, present, and future of the rights of people of all genders.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton Before Kate Beaton became a well-known and beloved comic creator, she was a young Canadian with a pile of student loans to pay off. Living in a small seaside town on the East Coast was great for many things, but it wasn’t going to help her make the payments quickly. That’s why Beaton decided to go west to the Alberta oil sands. This is her story of that experience, including the traumas surrounding such difficult work and the joys of connecting with other human beings.

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