You know how you know you're a nerd...

You look at the clock at 8:30 at night and realize that you can still make it to the public library before it closes at 10:00. You then proceed to check out Fruits Basket #14, Absolute Boyfriend #5, Incognegro, and Embroderies. You then realize you can't remember the last time you went to the library and checked out a traditional novel.

Aside from that, it was another one of those experiences at the public library where you're left kind of wandering around looking for what you want and trying to establish what version of shelving they've decided to go with. This is a big county library, on a junior college campus and has all the bells and whistles you could dream of. It also has graphic novel/manga shelving schizophrenia. There are some graphic novels and a couple manga titles in the adult 741.5 section, then when you enter the "Teens" area there is a stand alone shelf full of traditional graphic novels. Next to that is a hand lettered sign that says "Manga is found at the end of the YA Fiction shelves." Everything I've read emphasizes that manga are graphic novels. So why does no one really shelve them together? Why do Spiderman, Batman, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and Othello get to party together, and Tohru Honda, Princess Ai, and the others have to hang out in their own section?

One of the things I really hoped to get a clearer idea about during this semester was how things were shelved... unfortunately, I'm learning that no one else is sure either.

For a sidebar, I went to get my oil changed today, and was happily reading a copy of Fruits Basket to pass the time, and a teenage boy looked at me and said "Fruits Basket?" I smiled and nodded to which he replied "Cool."

My thrown down title for people who say graphic novels are for kids:

Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughn-

Makes me weep every time. It takes the story of the escape of a pride of lions from the zoo at the beginning of the Iraq War and reimagines the story from their point of view and through flashbacks of their former lives. If I taught in a high school, I'd totally buy a class set and make them read it. There are so many ways its been described before, I just think everyone should read it.

NYTimes

Dick Giordano Passes Away at 77

R.I.P. Dick Giordano

Wrapping up Women's History Month

SLJ's article on graphic novels about Women

I was glad to see this article focusing on graphic novels for and about women for March. It features one of the Female Force compilations of the comic books, and I hate to say it, but I just don't dig them. I'm not a fan of the art work or some of the subjects... Meredith Viera? Barbara Walters? Powerful women, yes, just not really appealing to the age bracket and type of kid I teach. I'm sure the kids will all line up for the more recent installments on Stephenie Meyer and maybe J.K. Rowling when they are released in August as a graphic novel.

Everything Old Is New Again

I find it interesting that so many of the graphic novels for elementary students seem to be rehashes of books that have come before. Nancy Drew graphic novels, the Hardy Boys, and now even the Babysitters Club have been born again in graphic novel form. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Nancy Drew (not deeply intellectual books, but I was trapped for long summers at my Meme's house with no air conditioning, no TV, and a collection of Nancy Drews every summer), but why are publishers so content to recycle? It seems like the money spent rewriting some of these stories and paying new illustrators could be used to publish some newer titles. I think one of the reasons manga is so successful with readers is that it is a new book, not a rehash of something that has come before.

I've been watching the same thing happen when some of the adult aimed graphic novels. I liked the fact that the graphic novel that was made based on Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson series was used to tell the origin story of the character, but now with the increasing success of her books the publisher has elected to base the graphic novels on her already published books (much like they are reissuing the original paperbacks in hardback). I liked the back story, why not keep working on original story telling? The same with the Harper Connelly series by Charlaine Harris, I like the Harper series, much better than the Sookie series as a matter of fact... but why redo the books as graphic novels? Why not some original stories? Its just frustrating, I want some original stories!

Harper Connelly Graphic Novels

Crogan's Adventures

While at Emerald City I spent some time chatting with one of the editors at the Oni Press table (Polly and the Pirates, Scott Pilgrim) and he recommended this new series following the Crogan family. So far there are only two volumes that have been released one about a pirate and another about a French Legionnaire, but the author intends for there to be sixteen volumes in the series. I thought they were fun, and I think boys will really enjoy them. Check them out at Oni's website which has a free 2 page preview of Crogan's Vengeance and a 26 page preview of Crogan's March.

Well now, I'm back from outer space...

Photo by me, July 2009, LaPush WA

I'm back from my spring break adventures and am ready to get back to work. I had a lot of fun in Seattle at the Emerald City Comic Con and got a chance to check out some graphic novel titles for kids, talked to some publishers, editors, and some authors. I was even lucky enough to run into an author I'm fan of and get a book signed complete with a drawing (total embarassing fan girl moment). Very exciting! I also watched Stan Lee walk by, and snickered at the fact that he and Leonard Nimoy are making a living signing sixty dollar autographs.

I've started reading the new Twilight graphic novel, and so far I've found it to be a fairly faithful adaptation of the first third of the first novel. I'm kind of torn about it, I do think some of my readers will finally be able to read the material instead of carrying the book around as a fashion accessory. I do like that Young Kim (the artist and adaptor) was given free reign to create her own visual images for the graphic novel seperate from the familiar faces of Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and company.

However, deep in my rebellious little heart I'm kind of cynical about it. Now the publisher will be able to break each novel down into multiple volumes and Stephenie Meyer and company will make even more money. I rather unfairly just had a mental image of her swimming through money like Scrooge McDuck. This is the same reservation I have about the James Patterson Maximum Ride series, rehashing the same materials to make money.

The graphic novel isn't a bad product, at least if you compare it to the body glitter and sparkle candy, and is a good adaptation. I could confidently purchase it before a library from any grade 5th and up and be confident that it would be a popular title.

Randomly Annoying

I was cruising along yesterday searching for articles on girls and graphic novels, and one of the annoying things about using such general terms to search is the stuff you come up with. Frequently, reviews pop up from things like School Library Journal and other publications. I stopped and read one of the reviews, and it made me grind my teeth.

I know the author wasn't trying to be offensive, and I'm probably the only person in the universe who did take offense. The reviewer talks about how this particular manga title didn't break new ground, blah, blah, blah, but it was okay. That's fine, we don't like everything, I've never read the book, I'm not looking to add it to my collection, so I don't really care if she liked the book or not. Then came the final line, where she comments that 'manga readers won't care that it's not a great story and doesn't break any new ground, they'll just be happy with a new title to read.'

Really? They'll just read anything as long as it has drawings of big eyed people? They don't care if the story is any good? They'll just read anything you put out there?

I find that attitude offensive. 'They' won't just read anything because you put it out there. Why should we spend our limited budgets on crap books nobody wants to read? Young adults don't need to be patronized by their librarians. Ugh.

Challenges in Managing and Maintaining Your Graphic Novel Collection

While interviewing librarians I also asked about special challenges in managing and maintaining their graphic novel collections. I received a variety of responses.

All of the librarians answered that wear and tear on the books was one of the greatest challenges they faced on a day to day basis. With a great number of titles only available in paperback, those volumes tend to wear out faster than other library bound graphic novels.

Two librarians specifically mentioned funding their collections as an additional expense. Many graphic novels are serialized, and budgets need to be built around possible standing orders for new books as they come out. A number of manga titles are parts of large collections (Fruits Basket 23 volumes, Tsubasa 24 volumes). This can make ordering tricky when dealing with library vendors, one librarian mentioned that when they tried to complete her libraries Naruto collection, she ended up being shorted volumes 4,9, and 13 because they were on back order.

A public librarian mentioned that there is a difficulty for her finding reviews of graphic novels from a lot of the traditional resources. As a result of this she turns to alternative resources to find reviews and alerts on new and upcoming series.

The same public librarian and one of the high school librarians were the only ones who mentioned being familiar with the content and making sure they put material in the appropriate part of the collection. The high school librarian I interviewed seemed to be the most familiar with her collection in order to know what she had on her shelves. Some of the other librarians admitted being unfamiliar with some of the titles and series in their own collections.

Although rationally, I know its impossible to know every title in your collection and to have read them all, I believe it is very important to know your collection. I also believe that most of the hurdles mentioned in the librarians interviews can be addressed. I've noticed that more publishers are starting to address the library market and are producing hardier versions of their books. As the genre continues to grow in popularity, I think this trend will continue. Even Tokyopop is putting out hard back multi volume collections of some of its most popular manga titles.

Cause I Think Its Funny

Shelving, Shelving, Where the heck is that book?

When I started working on this project I checked out a ton of graphic novels and manga from the public library. While there, I noticed they had the same issue I had run into before... the dreaded shelving issue.

In the school where I work, the majority of graphic novels are in 741.5, with the exception of graphic nonfiction. Every year I check out the graphic biographies and put them out in my classroom, and every year the children are shocked to find out they exist. These are titles the kids are interested in reading once they know where to find them. Usually you won't find a fifth grader reading about Alexander the Great (at least not where I work), but once my students see the graphic biographies they're ready to read them.

I was even more befuddled when I tried to figure out what was happening at the local branch library. They had the usual three sections for 741.5: children's, young adults, adult, but in the interest of making them more accessible (and I would guess easier to shelve) they had put out a seperate shelf that held only manga titles. I would assume that the original intention was to make them easily accessible to patrons, unfortunately there was an unintentional side effect. I don't know if it was poor training or general laziness amongst the employees, but in many cases you have to check the manga shelf, the young adult section, and the adult section to find what you were looking for. I have had to look in all three locations to find serialized volumes of Fruits Basket, Vol. 7 might be in adult, Vol. 12 in young adult, and all the other volumes elsewhere. It makes things very confusing. I wanted to ask, but I couldn't picture myself walking up to the branch librarian and saying "I noticed you have a very inefficient shelving system for your manga, can you give me your rationale?"

As a result of this confusion I decided to send a questionnaire out to various librarians to see how they handled shelving and a number of other issues. The results of the shelving question were interesting. The majority of public librarians responded that they kept everything in the 741.5 section, while school librarians seemed to have optioned for a separate graphic novel section. Although they seemed to uniformly pull the fictional graphic novels and place them in a prominent, easy to find area, they were inconsistent with their treatment of the nonfiction graphica. Only two of the librarians I heard from incorporated their nonfiction graphica into their separate graphic novel collections, the rest kept them filed with biography or in the appropriate nonfiction section.

Personally, I think that if you're going to go to the trouble to create a separate section for fictional graphic titles, you might as well create a section for the nonfiction ones as well. Many of the librarians answered the questionnaire that boys were the primary readers of the graphica (I'll address that separately later), and research shows that boys enjoy reading nonfiction titles. It only makes sense to me, to emphasize the availability of nonfiction graphic titles as well. Individual graphic biographies tend to get lost in a sea of other biographies. Give the more serious graphica as much of a chance to shine as you would Naruto. What's the line from the Kevin Costner movie - "If you build it. They will come."

Bleh...

I was at work at 6:30 am and came home at 10:00pm, so not much on my mind tonight.

I did finish reading the first volume of the manga version of the James Patterson Maximum Ride series and concluded that it's better than the actual novels.

Sometimes you really don't need everything for your collection!

I found a few references to this case when I first started researching for this class and its one of those situations that leaves me kind of wobbly. Christopher Handley of Iowa is apparently a manga collector. He’s the kind of guy who has to have it all, the kind of collector who has literally thousands of books and magazines in his collection. He’s so in to collecting manga that he has it shipped to him from Japan. Enter a postal inspector who opens the package, decides the pictures in the manga depict people under thirteen in sexual acts and turns them over for prosecution. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund described the beginning of the investigation like this:

Mr. Handley's case began in May 2006 when he received an express mail package from Japan that contained seven Japanese comic books. That package was intercepted by the Postal Inspector, who applied for a search warrant after determining that the package contained cartoon images of objectionable content. Unaware that his materials were searched, Handley drove away from the post office and was followed by various law enforcement officers, who pulled him over and followed him to his home. Once there, agents from the Postal Inspector's office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Special Agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, and officers from the Glenwood Police Department seized Handley's collection of over 1,200 manga books or publications; and hundreds of DVDs, VHS tapes, laser disks; seven computers, and other documents. Though Handley's collection was comprised of hundreds of comics covering a wide spectrum of manga, the government is prosecuting images appearing in a small handful.


This is where the disconnect between what’s acceptable for publication in Japan and the U.S. comes in to play, along with the knowledge of the person who’s doing the looking. Some people see obscenity, some people don’t.


It’s just a case that makes me kind of sad, I am interested in the fact that Neil Gaiman weighed in and has been helping the guy pay for his defense (along with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund). I think in many ways Gaiman is right, if we judge all graphica by the same standards that were used here, lots of people would be in trouble. Especially since the wording of the law is so open to interpretation. From what I can tell this could be especially troubling for manga, where because of the artistic style any number of characters could appear to be under the age of thirteen.


I understand that people want to protect children, but this sounds like a case that got out of hand. Do I think that Chris Handley showed poor judgment in what he chose to buy? Yes. Do I think he and the federal government should have spent the last four years wrangling over this? No. It just makes me sad. I understand why Mr. Handley chose to plead out at this point, I’m sure six months in jail is preferable to this continuing in court. I can’t imagine risking another five years of my life if convicted.


What Handley’s lawyer has to say:
http://www.tcj.com/news/christopher-handley%E2%80%99s-attorney-comments-on-his-case

Other articles and commentaries on the topic:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/obscene-us-manga-collector-jailed-6-months/#ixzz0hFqjFe1v

http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000372.shtml

http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000416.shtml

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/manga-porn/

http://otakureview.today.com/2008/12/11/the-case-against-christopher-handley/

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I am embarassed to admit that I'm experimenting with pictures from free code source sites to try and find things to make my wiki more interesting. Unfortunately, its not working. :( For some reason I can get all these ridiculous things to show up here, but not there. Sigh.

I will now use 'emo' graphics to express my feelings:

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Not to mention... how many of these images are legal? There are great images of anime charcters, and they are marked copyrighted, but in these days of internet image free for allness can anyone police them?

One size fits all...

I was talking to various people this week, and it kind of made me sad how many people thought that hard to interest readers = graphic novels. Picking books for students just isn't something where you throw things at the wall and see what sticks. You have to know their interests and spend a few minutes asking them questions to make them think about what they like. I try my hardest to provide the students I work with in the classroom a wide variety of reading materials. I have students who would much rather read a graphic novel about Bigfoot than something else, but I also have students who would rather read a book from the Percy Jackson series than a graphic novel or manga any day. There are also so many forms of graphica out there aimed at adults that deal with really heavy stuff, that I hate for people to be under the impression that its just a 'comic book.' For me, this semester is an extension of that. I want to find things that I think students will enjoy and want to read to add to my collection, I also want to make sure I'm not just purchasing crap to make sure I have enough 'girl' or 'boy' oriented material. I want to provide students with quality reading materials, no matter where they're shelved.

Johanna Draper Carlson

One of the web sites I've been using and enjoying while I've been working on this project is comicsworthreading.com. I was curious about what had inspired Johanna Draper Carlson to turn writing reviews for mediums like Publishers Weekly into a web site. I sent a brief (five question) email interview to Ms. Carlson to satisfy some of my curiosity, and she was cool enough to write back. Here's what she had to say:


What prompted your interest in graphic novels and comics?
I actually don't remember. I've been reading comics all my life, ever since I was a kid getting Superman Family Dollar Comics and Wonder Woman issues. But I dropped in and out during teen years, high school, and college. I finally got back into it for good when I went to grad school in popular culture, and I decided to start studying fandom online. I graduated in 1992 and kept talking about comics online afterwards.


What inspired you to start your own review web site?
I started reviewing on Usenet. I decided to start my own website in the late 90s as a place to collect what I'd said, so people could refer back to previous opinions. I was using space my ISP provided, then I bought the ComicsWorthReading.com domain name in late 1999. I was hand-coding the site back then, and I switched over to WordPress as the site engine in 2004.


I can't imagine not reviewing at this point. I like to share opinions on what I read and see what others thought as well.


When you read comics and graphic novels what do you look for to make it worth reading?
It depends on the material. Mostly, I'm looking to see if the book and author successfully meet what they're trying to do. You can't evaluate an ambitious literary/artistic graphic novel with the same criteria you'd use for the latest installment of shojo manga, but you can talk about what was good and what could be improved.




Is there any advice you would give school librarians about selecting comics, manga and graphic novels to their library’s collections?
Know your audience and what they want. I know librarians have to balance sometimes competing needs, especially when it comes to kids and young adults -- what they want to read may not be what their parents want to see. Also, there can still be a perception that the medium is for younger people, so librarians may face static when acquiring graphic novels for adults, especially those that deal with mature subjects and content. There are resources out there to support you in these areas.


I encourage them to use the many resources available to them, including reviews, both general audience and those specifically aimed at the library market.


What’s your must read list for comics and graphic novels?
I put up a page on my website answering just that question: http://comicsworthreading.com/cwr/ hosts lists of "essential graphic novels are must-reads for anyone interested in the medium."

A big thanks to Johanna Draper Carlson for taking the time to email me back! Hopefully I'll have more mini-interviews to post soon!