The characters wander through illustrated frames and communicate with each other through speech bubbles, but don't look for Archie, Jughead and the gang -- graphic novels are far from kids' comic books of yesteryear.

"The thing that strikes me as strange about it is that as you add pictures, it suddenly becomes a marginal (art) form" to some people, said Anjali Sachdeva, an English professor at Augustana College.

Graphic novels are wide-ranging: sword-and-sorcery fantasies, gritty noir epics, the author's memoir or even the 9/11 Commission Report. The plots can be intricate, the characters complex and the artwork gorgeous. They often are bloody and have very mature content.

They have more depth than more traditional comics, Ms. Sachdeva and others said.

She pointed out "Batman: The Dark Knight", a story about Batman as an older man. It is a more a psychological and philosophical story about the hero dealing with being older.

He's really bitter in the series because he's fought crime his whole life and nothing seems to have changed or it's gotten worse, Ms. Sachdeva said.

"It's in the traditional superhero mode, but it's bringing more to it," she said.

The genre also has been used to explain current events. The 9/11 Commission Report has been adapted into a graphic novel that Slate.com is featuring it on its Web site.

"Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood" by Marjane Satrapi is about the author's life in Iran and the political and religious turmoil in the Middle East, said Ms. Sachdeva.

"And that is in no way childish or removed from reality," she said.

William Martin, 25, of Rock Island, said he read comic books as a child and liked the medium. But as grew older, he said he wanted something more intelligent, "more together."

"It's more like watching a film rather than reading a comic book," Mr. Martin said.

And graphic novels have been making the leap to film. Frank Miller's "Sin City" and "V for Vendetta" by Alan Moore and David Lloyd and others have hit the big screen.

Another of Miller's works, "300", about a small group of ancient Greek soldiers fighting off a massive army, is the most recent example.

Mr. Martin said he hopes that the transition to movies does not change the genre, with graphic novels being written merely as movie scripts.

Scott Zborowski, 21, a senior at Augustana, said he began reading graphic novels after the movies based on them came out.

They have a lot of the same depth as conventional novels, but with less need for the readers to visualize what is going on, Mr. Zborowski said.

That's not always a good thing, he said. But sometimes "it's fun to see what the author was thinking."

"I'm big on regular novels, but this format is a nice change of pace," he said.

Movies have been bringing the genre more into the mainstream, Mr. Zborowski said.

Ava Ketter, director of the Rock Island Library, agreed that graphic novels are becoming more popular, partly because of the movies, but also because of fan support.

The library has offered graphic novels for a couple of years, but people were asking for them well before that, Ms. Ketter said. Professional journals also began reviewing them.

"The combination of gorgeous artwork and text has been pretty common for children for years," she said. Graphic novels are an expansion on that theme for adults.

"The professional staff (at the library), in collaboration, decided it was an art form that deserved to have a place," she said.

She also agreed graphic novels are more complex than comic books and the content is for an older audience. The library does not have them in the children's section.

Most of the people who check them out range in age from their late teens into their 30s, said Ms. Ketter.

"They are not for everyone," she said. "No format is. There are people out there who would rather be boiled in oil than read a romance."

Ms. Sachdeva uses the genre in her classes to show students a different form of creative writing. She often has students do a short work in the form, even if they only use stick figures.

The complexity of graphic novels compared to comic books is just a natural development of a medium over time, Ms. Sachdeva said. A similar development can be seen in television.

"If you compare 'Leave it to Beaver' to 'Desperate Housewives' it's just not the same thing," she said.

The graphic novel genre is being used to tell many stories. Some are biographical, and others reflect current events. The 9/11 Commission Report on the 2001 terrorist attacks has been adapted into a graphic novel by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. It can be viewed on Slate.com's Web site at http://www.slate.com/id/2147309/nav/tap1/