Words are not the only way to tell a story.

“I’m always interested in how pictures tell stories,” said art professor Robert Petersen.

Petersen noticed graphic novels or comic books are a phenomenon while teaching his non-western fine arts class.

He researched them and learned that the art of graphic novels is a popular topic in Japan, and he decided to look further at what was happening with comic books in the United States.

Petersen said a graphic novel is both “a comic book that needs a bookmark” and a “cultural phenomenon.”

Petersen will give a lecture titled EIU Uncovered, which is designed for teachers to choose a topic they would like to speak about that they would not normally in the classroom and that might be of interest to students.

EIU Uncovered is and event where students can come out and see professors beyond the classroom, said UB vice chair Melissa Schaefer.

Each speaker this semester will talk about different subjects and Petersen’s lecture, titled “How to Read a Graphic Novel,” will focus on two comics and he will give pointers on how to approach a graphic novel.

“I think it is something definitely out of the box,” Schaefer said of the lecture topic.

Although similar in length, reading a graphic novel is different than an ordinary novel.

Reading a graphic novel, which can be completed in one night, Petersen said it is very different from reading a novel and many people read them too fast.

“It should be like watching a play,” he said, adding that the reader should scan back and forth between the words and pictures of the comic.

To avoid spoiling his lecture, Petersen did not want to give away too much information, but he mentioned that Art Spiegelman’s comic “Mouse” and Marjane Satrapi’s comic “Persepolis” would play a role in his lecture.

“Mouse” is about the holocaust and “Persepolis” won a Pulitzer Prize.

Petersen thinks that his lecture will be of interest to many students after talking to a librarian at the Booth Library.

“I know it’s a very popular subject in school,” Petersen said.

He says he knows this because while working with the library to expand the graphic novel selection he was told, that it is the single most used section in the library.

Petersen was prepared long before he knew he was going to give the lecture – he went back about 100 years’ worth of researching the progress of graphic novels.

He has always had an interest in art and theater and graphic novels only add to the mixture. Currently, Petersen is a book on the history of narrative art.

Just like Petersen has expanded his knowledge in the area of comic books, he hopes to do the same for students.

“I hope to get people who haven’t really explored graphic novels,” he said of the lecture.

The lecture is at 8 p.m. tonight, in the Martin Luther King Jr. Union university ballroom. Held by University Board, the lecture is the first of four this fall semester.