15 Graphic Novel Concepts: Ideas for Long-Form Visual Stories

Graphic novels offer space for complexity—deeper character development, richer world-building, and stories that reward sustained attention. These 15 concepts are designed for the format’s unique strengths.

Literary Adaptations

1. The Immigrant Epic

Three generations of one family’s immigration story—told simultaneously, each generation’s timeline in a different visual style. Past and present comment on each other until they converge.

2. The Parallel Lives

Two people who never meet but whose lives mirror each other across decades and continents. Their stories interweave, each choice highlighting a different path through similar circumstances.

3. The Mythology Retelling

Ancient myths retold in a modern setting—gods as tech billionaires, heroes as gig workers, monsters as systemic failures. The visual language shifts between mythic and contemporary.

Historical Fiction

4. The Lost Generation

Artists, writers, and dreamers in a specific historical moment—Harlem Renaissance, Paris in the 20s, San Francisco in the 60s. Multiple perspectives create a portrait of a time and place.

5. The Forgotten War

A lesser-known conflict told through the eyes of ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances. The graphic novel format allows both intimate moments and devastating scope.

6. The Invention

The story behind a world-changing invention, following multiple people whose lives intersect around its creation—the inventor, those displaced by it, those saved by it.

Contemporary Drama

7. The Building

One apartment building, multiple stories. Each chapter follows different residents whose lives touch briefly—a mosaic of urban life that reveals connections only visible from above.

8. The Season

Following a sports team through a single season—players, coaches, families, fans. The regular rhythm of games structures a story about competition, community, and what we sacrifice for glory.

9. The Year After

Multiple people processing the same loss—a disaster, a death, a departure—through a year of recovery. Each perspective reveals different aspects of grief and healing.

Genre Innovations

10. The Slow Apocalypse

Climate change unfolds over decades through one coastal community. Each section jumps forward, showing the same locations and families adapting, denying, or fighting against inevitable change.

11. The Generation Ship

Generations aboard a ship traveling to a distant star—told as oral history, legend, and recovered documentation. What’s lost and kept across generations becomes the central mystery.

12. The Magic System

A fantasy world where magic works through art itself—drawing, music, dance. The graphic novel format becomes part of the story as characters literally create magic on the page.

Experimental Structures

13. The Investigation

A true-crime style investigation into a fictional mystery. Multiple document types—interview transcripts, evidence photos, newspaper clippings—create a graphic novel the reader must piece together.

14. The Memoir (Unreliable)

An autobiography by someone whose memory is failing. Early chapters are clear; later ones fragment. The reader experiences the narrator’s cognitive changes through the visual medium.

15. The Collaboration

A graphic novel about making a graphic novel—two creators whose relationship evolves through the project, their conflicts visible in the art itself as styles clash and merge.

Designing for Length

Plan your structure: Graphic novels benefit from clear acts, sections, or chapters that give readers breathing room.

Use the page count: You have space for scenes that wouldn’t fit in shorter formats—quiet moments, environmental storytelling, character beats.

Visual motifs: Returning images and symbols create coherence across longer works. Plant early, pay off late.

Pacing varies: Unlike serialized comics, graphic novels can slow down without losing readers. Use that freedom for impact.

Begin Your Graphic Novel

Ready to tackle long-form visual storytelling? Multic’s collaborative platform supports the sustained effort graphic novels require—keeping teams aligned across the months or years of creation.

---

Related: How to Make a Graphic Novel and Series Planning Guide