This week, thousands of book industry retailers, agents, authors, and hangers-on have been gathering in New York for the annual BookExpo America conference.

Patrik Henry Bass, senior editor of Essence magazine, is among those attending the show. And what he’s noticed is that the enormous popularity of graphic novels is continuing to grow even bigger.

He explains why graphic novels are so huge right now, and walks us through some of his favorite titles from the past year.

Patrik's top four from the past year:

• "Black Blizzard" by Yoshihiro Tatsumi.
• "Other Lives" by Peter Bagge
• "The Impostor's Daughter: A True Memoir" by Laurie Sandall
• "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge" by Josh Neufeld

Celeste Headlee recommends:

• "Hatter M: The Looking Glass Wars"
• "Kapilavastu (Buddha, Vol. 1)"

Listeners recommend:

• Eric from Miami: "'Watchmen' is the graphic novel that really got me into graphic novels. If you saw the movie if the movie follows pretty well, but the graphic novel is much much better."
• Nelson from Hollywood, Fla.: "A couple of graphic novels that I would recommend are 'Walking Dead,' Marvel's 'Watchmen' and probably anything with the Silver Surfer."
• Tim from Baltimore: "I recommend 'Broken Saints.' It's a graphic novel that was placed on the internet and you followed it as it was updated. I think that also it was the technology I think that is the wave of the future that kept me involved."