Say the words “graphic novel” to someone not familiar with graphic fiction and what pops in their heads? Yes, Superman. Maybe Spider-Man.

But educated readers – and I’m hoping that you are one of them – know that graphic novels can be about anything. Yes, many of them – too many, perhaps – focus on the exploits of Spidey, Superman and Batman. But other graphic novels are Westerns, or spy thrillers, slice-of-life vignettes and mysteries.

Want an example? Try reading City of Glass, a story written by Paul Auster and transformed into a graphic novel by artists Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. This sprawling, philosophical and quite grim tale is a mystery, noir, slice-of-life and tragedy all wrapped into 144 deliciously drawn pages.

The plot of this 2004 book published by Picador is a difficult one to sum up. It starts with a phone call. From there, a lonely writer named Quinn – who writes cheap detective novels under a pseudonym – takes on the job of trailing an inmate recently released from jail. The person hiring Quinn? The man’s daughter-in-law, eager, she says, to protect her husband from his rather vicious father.

As with all of the best graphic novels, revealing too much of the plot will spoil the story. City of Glass never unfolds as you’d expect. It mutates from a gritty noir into a far more philosophical work. Its ending is as gut wrenching as is any tragedy I’ve read. To truly capture all of its nuances, you need to read Auster’s story more than once. If that's not the sign of real literature, I don't know what is.

So next time someone dismisses graphic novels as kid stuff, hand them City of Glass. You can bet they’ll be hooked. They may even forget that they’re reading a comic.