The graphic novel that just made literary history (and why you should read it)

When Lee Lai won this year’s Stella Prize, she broke two barriers. One: she is the first non-binary person to win. Two: her book, Cannon, is the first graphic novel to claim the award.

Two reasons to celebrate. And perhaps particularly the recognition for graphic novels, which for so long have been shoved into a compartment reserved for children, teens and devotees of Japanese comics, superheroes, super monsters and space odysseys. Nothing wrong with that, but they have become so much more. Lai also became the first graphic novelist to be named as The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist in the prize’s 30-year history.

Cannon takes us into very personal territory. As Stella chief executive Fiona Sweet says, it’s “a beautifully intimate story of forgiveness, gentleness, queerness and care”. Lai says it’s a book about love and rage, two emotions that have fuelled her work as an artist.

Readers who never bother with graphic novels might not have noticed that the genre has been changing and diversifying over the years, becoming more thoughtful, innovative, imaginative and challenging. It probably started with Maus, Art Spiegelman’s 1986 classic retelling of the Holocaust through a lens depicting the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats.

Other landmark works include Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s memoir about coming of age in revolutionary Iran, and a sequence of candid, disturbing and funny memoirs by Alison Bechdel, beginning in 2006 with her much-lauded Fun Home.

Some graphic novelists in America have reached celebrity status. The prolific Daniel Clowes emerged from the alternative comics scene. He’s won dozens of awards and nominations, he’s branched out into making films and he’s had exhibitions of his art. His latest work, Monica, is hailed as “a dazzling romp” from “one of the defining voices of the graphic novel boom over the past quarter century”.

In Australia, graphic novels for adults are often hard to get off the ground. They need a lot of time and money to produce and not many publishers here take them on. Lai, an Australian who lives in Montreal, is grateful to Australian literary publisher Giramondo for acquiring Cannon.

But some publishers keep an eye open for opportunities in the burgeoning younger reader market. The recently formed Perentie Press specialises in graphic novels for children and young adults, and has just brought out The Curator by Wendy Tyrer, about a struggling Melbourne art student in a world where artists are mysteriously disappearing.

Children who have graduated from picture books often take to graphic novels and devour them at such a rate that some of my friends are worried their children and grandchildren will never go on to read books of text.

Perhaps we should take care to steer them to the best ones available, such as Ghost Book by Remy Lai, which won the 2024 prize for children’s literature at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Inspired by Chinese mythology, it follows the adventures of a girl and a ghost boy in a story the award judges say “tackles huge themes of life, death, destiny and dumplings”. Remy Lai’s latest graphic novel is Chickenpox, about a big sister stuck at home with four itchy little siblings.

Another award-winning graphic novel is Underground: Marsupial Outlaws and Other Rebels of Australia’s War in Vietnam, by Mirranda Burton, which won the Readings Young Adult Prize in 2022. Based on interviews with veterans, activists and refugees, it interweaves stories of people with different perspectives on the war and traces its effect on Australian history. The “marsupial outlaw” is a draft dodger who turns out to be a pet wombat.

There’s such a rich variety in graphic novels now, and they take us to places that perhaps only a certain combination of words and pictures can reach. I’m looking forward to more.

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