The recent surge in popularity of graphic novels for children signals a new golden age for the comics medium. But children discovering the pleasure of words and pictures working together is nothing new. British children have always loved comics: think back to the Beano, which sold almost two million copies per week in 1950. What feels different now is not the existence of young comics readers, but the way they consume them – these days chiefly in the form of books. And what they are learning is that visual storytelling is not some guilty pleasure, or a stepping stone to “proper” reading. It is reading.

That should be a call to action for all “adult” publishers who don’t already publish graphic novels. If children’s publishing has spent the past decade normalising comics for young readers, adult publishing now has to ask what it is offering those readers next. We shouldn’t be surprised if a new comics-literate generation seeks out more sophisticated YA and adult titles in the same medium. 

I grew up loving the Beano, but in a culture that perceived comics as something to grow out of, there was too rarely any obvious next stage. Today’s young readers are growing up with a different set of expectations. A child moving from Bunny vs Monkey and Dog Man to Heartstopper into adult reading is not crossing from a marginal medium into the literary mainstream – they’re already there. The question is whether adult publishers will be there to meet them.

Over the past 20 years, I have seen this shift firsthand. When I founded SelfMadeHero in 2007 with the Manga Shakespeare series, none of us could have anticipated the multi-million-pound market that manga has become. In 2025, manga accounted for almost half of adult graphic-novel sales (NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market). The wider UK graphic-novel sector has also grown sharply: adult graphic novels reached £52.8m in 2025, up from £48.7m in 2024, while Children’s Comic Strip Fiction and Graphic Novels reached £25.9m, up from £20.3m. Together, those book sales were worth £78.7m in 2025, up 13.9% year on year (around £46m more than the sector earned in 2019). But that growth still feels too concentrated around breakout titles, both new (like Heartstopper, Dog Man, Bunny vs Monkey) and old (like Persepolis, Fun Home, Blankets). If those books can become bestsellers, others will follow, but only if we build a more confident culture of greater visibility and awareness around the form.

And this is why I look across the Channel with envy. The UK figures show that demand is real, especially among young readers. But France shows us what happens when comics occupy a wider place in book culture. The French bande dessinée market sold 68 million copies in 2024, worth €837m (GfK-NielsenIQ’s 2025 market report on 2024 BD sales), showing the scale a mature comics-reading culture can sustain.

Serious investment in the form must include education, training and genuine respect, much like that granted to the film industry (worth around £13 billion a year to the UK economy)

Why can’t we be more French? Not by slavishly reproducing their titles, but by unapologetically accepting the larger lesson that comics can be part of adult reading life? They can be just as literary, political, satirical, romantic, experimental, enjoyable, profound as any work of traditional prose – and should stand beside them as equals, not beneath them as curios. There are signs that the culture is shifting. The arrival this year of an inaugural Graphic Novel category at The British Book Awards (winner: Jamie Smart’s Bunny vs Monkey: Intergalactic Monkey Business!), as well as the Comics & Graphic Novels Day at the Hay Festival, is welcome for the embrace it signals from within the mainstream book trade. 

The Comics Cultural Impact Collective is also championing the wider cause of the form’s cultural diversity, as well as its economic value. But real change cannot solely be achieved by the isolated phenomena of a few awards, campaigns, or breakthrough titles, however valuable. Publishers, retailers, festival organisers and reviewers will all have a role to play in deciding the future of this huge potential readership. As a publisher with 20 years’ experience, and now as a judge on the First Graphic Novel Award (the only award in the UK for works in progress), I recognise the wealth and depth of British talent, ripe for the publishing.

That doesn’t mean every adult imprint could or even should establish a graphic-novel list tomorrow. Publishing graphic novels is a specialist art, requiring an editorial team that understands layout, lettering, pace and the essential relationship between pictures and words. Serious investment in the form must include education, training and genuine respect, much like that granted to the film industry (worth around £13 billion a year to the UK economy).

The children’s graphic-novel boom is no soothing bedtime story: it is a wake-up call from the future adult market. These readers are already buying, borrowing, reading, recommending and re-reading our books. So, the issue is not whether they will all grow up to consume adult graphic novels. It is whether, as an industry, we can build the lists, the editorial expertise and the confidence to receive and satisfy the eager expectations of the many who do.