Suggest me a Graphic Novel

What this tool does

You want something illustrated, a story told in pictures and words at once, but the field is huge and you do not know where to drop in. This tool hands you a graphic novel at random from a hand-picked list, so instead of scrolling endless lists you get a title and a starting point.

Press the button for a pick. Press it again for another. Ask for a few at once if you would rather choose from a short set. No sign-up, nothing to install, just a book to open.

How to use it

1. Number / Quantity. How many titles to pull at once, from 1 to 100.
2. Generate. Pulls a fresh graphic novel, or a fresh set if you asked for several.
3. Starts with, Contains, Ends with. Optional filters that trim the shelf before it picks. Leave them blank and it draws from the full shelf.
4. Copy. Copies the current titles to your clipboard as a plain list.

A title is on screen as soon as the page loads, so there is nothing to set up first.

How it works

The shelf is fixed and each press pulls from it at random. Ask for several and you get that many different titles, with no repeats in a single set.

The filters let you aim. Contains keeps any line where your text appears, the creator included, so typing moore brings up the Alan Moore shelf, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell among them. Starts with goes by the first character of the line and ends with by the last.

What is on the shelf

It is a broad shelf, and that breadth is the point, because graphic novels are not one thing. There is literary memoir like Maus, Persepolis, and Blankets, sweeping series like Saga and The Sandman, the civil rights history of March, and manga like Akira and Death Note, all sitting together.

A random pull can land you on a quiet autobiographical book one press and a sprawling fantasy the next. Take it as a strong starting shelf rather than the whole medium, and if you already have a creator or a word in mind, the Contains box narrows it down.

More than comics for kids

It is worth clearing up what a graphic novel is, because the form still fights an old reputation. These are not throwaway kids' comics and they are not all capes and fights. Maus, a son drawing his father's survival of the Holocaust, won a Pulitzer Prize. Persepolis tells a childhood under revolution in Iran. The pictures are not decoration on top of a story, they are how the story is told.

The cartoonist Scott McCloud laid this out in his book Understanding Comics, which happens to sit on this very shelf. His argument is that comics are a full medium, not a lesser one, and that the space between two panels, the bit your mind fills in, is doing real work that prose cannot copy. Once you read a few good ones with that in mind, the form stops looking like a simpler version of a novel and starts looking like its own thing.

Why let it pick

Handing the choice to a tool feels backwards until you remember how browsing a huge field usually ends, which is with a closed tab and nothing chosen. In a 2000 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper found that shoppers offered twenty-four jams were far less likely to buy one than those offered six, because too many options leave us stuck. A wall of graphic novels does the same thing. A random pull breaks the stall and gives you a real place to start, which beats another evening of scrolling.

Choosing between a few

Pull a few at once and a couple of questions sort them out. First, what kind of read are you after. A literary memoir like Persepolis is a slow, close read, a series like Saga is a long ride you can sink into, and a tight manga volume is a fast one. Match that to your mood and your time.

Second, check whether it stands alone or runs across volumes, since a series is a bigger commitment than a single book, and on a busy week a one-volume story is the safer pick. Then do the thing you can only do with this medium, which is flip it open and look. The art tells you in seconds whether the style is for you, clean and spare or dense and detailed, in a way no blurb can. If it pulls your eye, start there.

Questions people ask

Is it free, and does it save anything?

Free, and no account needed. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is saved, so copy a title to hold on to it.

Can I get a few at once?

Yes. Set the quantity to the number you want, up to 100, and press Generate for that many different titles in one pull.

What is the difference between a graphic novel and a comic?

Roughly, a comic comes in short serial issues while a graphic novel is a complete, book-length story, whether told in one volume or collected from a series. The shelf here leans toward complete, book-length works.

Is manga included?

Yes. The shelf mixes manga such as Akira and Death Note in with Western graphic novels, since they are all book-length stories told in pictures and words.

Are these for adults or for children?

Both, depending on the title. The list ranges from all-ages stories to serious, adult books, so it is worth a quick look at a title before handing it to a young reader.

References

1. Scott McCloud, "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art", 1993, on comics as a medium and how the form works. https://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/
2. Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, "When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, the study behind choice overload. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11138768/