Research literacy skills are essential for work, successful living and lifelong learning. Unfortunately, students often find research courses boring and irrelevant. An online graphic novel was developed to stimulate interest and motivation, where students learn research literacy skills that are embedded in the context of the unfolding story. The learner adopts the role of a citizen living in a vast metropolis in the near future who learns the value of becoming ‘research savvy’ and the skills that are needed to achieve that goal. Results indicate that students had a very satisfactory learning experience and they made statistically significant gains in their research literacy competency scores. Students reported that learning research literacy skills through this medium was enjoyable and the novel format acted as an incentive to read and learn. They indicated that they had made the greatest gains in detecting bias and applying critical thinking skills, reflecting the major theme of the novel. The graphic novel has the potential to help students learn valuable skills that will help them to make the transition from high school to college, however, further work is needed to identify how it can be used most effectively with different curricula and student groups.