GUEST POST BY LIBRARYKAT
COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS
I’ve mentioned graphic novels so much in my comments and in posts at Pollyanna’s Booklist that Robin asked me to write a little bit about them for all y’all.
I’ve been reading comic books since first grade, I started by finding the comics in the newspapers when I was about five years old – and of course I watched so many cartoons on television (Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snaggletooth, Mighty Mouse …). It’s getting real close to a half century of comics reading, along with reading almost all kinds of books. In all those earlier years, though, I never thought comics would be more than just my private pleasure reading. Then, I became a public librarian and found that I truly enjoyed working with teens. Back then, in the mid-1980s, we librarians were already trying to find ways to attract the reluctant readers (mostly boys) into our libraries and to encourage them to read. Around that time, I discovered our local comics shop (this was in Honolulu, Hawaii), and realized that comics could be one way of getting those reluctant reader boys back into the library. This was about the time that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Usagi Yojimbo, and many other black-and-white independent comics (i.e. not from Marvel or DC) were becoming big hits, and Frank Miller was writing Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore was writing Watchmen. I was doomed to become one of the so-called “experts” about comics for libraries. In 1994 I started a graphic novel column in Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) which I still write. After more than 20 years working in public libraries, I had to leave due to my husband’s new career as a pastor, and I truly lucked into a job with a book distributor that wanted someone who knew graphic novels to be the graphic novel selector (as well as the YA specialist). Now, I can tell kids I get paid to read comics.
So why am I using comics and graphic novels interchangeably? What are they? Comics, or specifically comic books, are those stapled pamphlets that used to be sold in every grocery store, news stand, and convenience store, and now are mostly sold in comics specialty shops (and a few bookstores). Graphic novels are comics in bound book form; some are complete in and of themselves, what the trade calls original graphic novels. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and Blankets by Craig Thompson are original graphic novels. Many others are collections of several comic book issues that comprise a story arc, telling a complete story in those issues. The Maus books by Art Spiegelman are such collections, as are Watchmen by Alan Moore, the Sandman books by Neil Gaiman, and most of the superhero graphic novels published by Marvel and DC Comics. Graphic novels can also be nonfiction; Fun Home and Blankets are both memoirs, there is a graphic novel adaptation of The 9/11 Report, and Studs Terkel’s Working has also been adapted into graphic novel format.
Comics fans and pundits have debated for years about the origin of the term “graphic novel” – Will Eisner first used it to describe his books back in the 1970s, but there is evidence that the term existed decades before. The illustrator Lynd Ward published wordless books of woodcut illustrations telling a narrative back in the 1920s, and Frans Masereel published The Passion of a Man in 1918. Many of the earlier stories were wordless, but many of them also used sequential panels to propel their stories. Suffice it to say that graphic novels as a form became a major part of comics publishing starting in the 1970s.
By the mid-1990s, more public libraries were adding graphic novels, and some were carrying comic books as well. Interest in the format really kicked into high gear in 2002, when the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) division of the American Library Association (ALA) presented a preconference at the Annual Conference, that focused on graphic novels. Neil Gaiman, Jeff Smith (who wrote Bone), Colleen Doran (who writes A Distant Soil), and Art Spiegelman spoke at the preconference and discovered that librarians already knew who they were and liked what they wrote.
You’ll find graphic novels in a majority of the U.S. public libraries, and increasingly in school libraries and college libraries. More colleges and universities are offering courses on graphic novels; even West Point, our Army military academy, requires all its students to read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, in order to gain a better perspective on what happened in Iran in the early 1980s. Maryland’s department of education has been developing school curricula on comics in that state’s schools. Comics are pretty much everywhere now.
Some forum members may be very familiar with comics, others may not. For those who aren’t and want to learn more, I suggest reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud; it’s in comic book format, provides a great introduction to the format, and gives guidance to reading comics.
I found that Bryan Talbot’s graphic novel The Tale of One Bad Rat was a fantastic entry point book for women unfamiliar with comics. It’s the story of teenaged Helen, who has run away from home after years of abuse by her father. The book recounts her slow healing, with the help of caring adults, and with her love of Beatrix Potter’s books. I had discovered it in my comics shop, then one day a man came to me in the library and said he wanted to donate a book that had helped him and a number of his friends who had suffered abuse as children, and it was The Tale of One Bad Rat. I had been writing my graphic novel column for several years when I finally wrote a review for the book in 1997. In those days, I had to send the books to the VOYA office so they could photograph the cover; the book didn’t come back to me for months. When it did, my editor included a note saying that the book made the rounds of the office, and that now she understood why I like graphic novels so much. That was the book that got her started on reading graphic novels.
I have mentioned some of my current favorites at Pollyanna’s Booklist, but here are some of my favorites. You’ll notice that they are NOT superhero comics. I read a lot of superhero comics and like them, but I like these more.
Azumanga Daioh by Kiyohiko Azuma is one of my very favorite manga. This is a hilarious series set in a suburban Japanese high school, focused on the girls in one homeroom class. Their teacher is a total ditz, one of the girls is a 10-year-old genius; each student is a type: the athlete, the hyperactive silly, the studious one, the “country girl” (from Osaka), and so on. The story of their years together in high school is told in short episodes (some are 4-panel strips, others last for several pages). There are 4 volumes, which were then collected into an omnibus edition. Unfortunately, the publisher ADV Manga is kaput, and I haven’t heard if any other publisher will bring it back.
Yotsuba&! is another manga series by Azuma, and ranks right up there with Azumanga Daioh as a favorite. This series has been picked up by Yen Press, which just released the first 5 volumes originally published by ADV Manga along with a brand-new 6th volume. Yotsuba is a 5-year-old girl who lives with her single parent dad in a typical Japanese suburb. Each book is filled with stories of Yotsuba’s encounters with such things as doorbells, playground swings, hunting cicadas (something I did as a kid in Japan), and in the 6th volume, getting her first bicycle and helping her dad and his buddy build a set of bookshelves. The title means Yotsuba and … it’s pronounced yoh-tsoo-bah-toe. Lots of kids in my school love this series.
Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai is another favorite (you’ll notice I have LOTS of favorites!). Stan grew up in Hawaii and went to school with my sisters-in-law, and I used to work with his wife’s aunty. Beyond that, however, the series is excellent. Usagi Yojimbo is a ronin, a masterless samurai, in a Japan much like the early Tokugawa-era but peopled entirely by animals. Usagi is just that, a rabbit. As he wanders throughout the land, he deals with bandits, corrupt lords and officials, various ghosties and ghoulies of the Japanese variety, and ninja both good and evil. Stan researches everything, so his descriptions of life, of sword-making, seaweed farming, pottery making, etc. are authentic. All his obake and yokai (ghosts and monsters) are based on Japanese folklore.
I started reading Bone by Jeff Smith when it was still in comic book issues. This series has become a staple in most libraries; its volumes are the top-circulating books in my school’s library, and the students read them over and over again. It recounts the story of the Bone cousins, Fone Bone, Smiley Bone, and Phoney Bone, and their adventures with the inhabitants of Barrelhaven, the stupid rat creatures who hunt them, and eventually their battles against an evil that threatens everyone. It is truly an epic tale told from the viewpoint of the humble, in that sense much like The Lord of the Rings. Because it’s in graphic novel format, however, I can get reluctant reader boys who wouldn’t touch a prose novel to read and reread every volume of this series, meaning they’re reading a 1300-page story. That’s so cool!
There are so many more great graphic novels, but they will just have to wait for another guest post, if Robin will allow more from me.*
* Note I would be HAPPY for more from you about graphic novels. –Ed.
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