Public Access

If I were to put a graphic novel on the shelves of the library it would be the Artesia series. The reason for this is that there is so much controversial content in it. It has homosexuality and bisexuality. Orgies and ritualistic threesomes. Witchcraft and paganism abound in its pages. There is nonstop flow of sexism and racism that coincides with its overbearing religious themes, which all go into the war being fought. I feel it is so important that all concepts and ideas be accessible on our libraries shelves. Artesia encompasses so many subjects that are taboo and all too often censored. Our public libraries are for our public, not just for part of the public, so it should encompass everything.

I would start with a complete collection of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Lone Wolf and Cub. I would tell the librarian that, though this is a manga classic, and a deeply moving, beautifully drawn tale of love and revenge, due to the graphic violence in it, it's probably best suited for readers 16 and older.

Next I would hand over Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by the creative team of Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, and Annie Di Donna. It's the story of philosopher Bertrand Russell's search for the logical foundations of Mathematics, but it's so much more than just that. Not only does it include cameos by just about everybody who was anybody in modern philosophy, but it's also an interesting meditation on the process of creativity and the relation of genius to madness. The topic and style of art make it appropriate for all ages, but the reader who will probably get the most out of it is, again, over the age of 16.


And because really, I don't hate small small children, I'd bring in several of the Franklin Richards digests that Marvel puts out. Primary creator Chris Eliopoulos makes Franklin and Herbie into Calvin and Hobbes-ish characters, but where Calvin could only imagine having a transmorgifier or a ray-gun, Franklin Richards can actually build these things, and the chaos that results is hilarious.

Finally, I'd hand over the complete Sleeper run. I think that Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips did one of the greatest genre mashups of all time in this glorious amalgam of crime fiction and superheroes. It's the darkly comedic and quite violent story of Holden Carver, an undercover agent sent to infiltrate and take down a major criminal-terrorist organization. And then his handler ends up comatose. Throughout the series, Carver struggles not only to maintain his cover, but also with the temptations to "go native." Several cliches of both genres are upended and the suspense keeps readers on the edge of their seat.

Public libraries are very keen to build comics collections, but many decision-makers haven't read comics since they were children. A few high-profile comics like Maus and Persepolis have made it onto the public library radar. I would donate a few books that expand the spectrum of subjective and factual reportage. Here's a little bibliography that I put together (so tempted to call this "Four Factual Funnies"):

Doucet, Julie. 1999. My New York Diary. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly. My New York Diary is comprised of two parts. The first half of the book is comprised of short stories about Julie Doucet's time in Montreal junior colleges. A good-ish Catholic, she tries to be amenable, but finds herself falling into bad relationships, while often being frustrated as she struggles with her art. The second half of the book is a single story that takes place in New York, where she went to art school. Here, she faces the consequences of years of conflict avoidance as a long-term relationship goes very, very bad. Meanwhile, her comics career is going well as she meets the likes of Art Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly and Charles Burns. It becomes apparent that her New York boyfriend, who remains unnamed, is associated with unwanted questions about her work: Is doing art selfish? Is art pursued at the cost of one's emotional and physical health? The scope of My New York Diary is domestic, the focus is intimate and the tone is gently unforgiving as Doucet uses herself as an avatar to examine the relationship between personal motivation and art practice. Doucet's style recalls underground comix artists Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky, using thick lines and a lot of darks, creating figures that seem full and overripe, like they're ready to pop. Panels are intentionally crowded with text, shadows, people and details, as if every frame represents for "Julie Doucet" a moment pregnant with surprises — welcome and not.


Sacco, Joe. 2000. Safe Area Goradze. Seattle: Fantagraphics. Cartoonist-journalist Joe Sacco spent four months of 1994-95 in Goradze, a designated "safe area" of Bosnia that in reality was cut off from the rest of the world during the Bosnian conflict. Safe Area Goradze is an original, full-length work built on oral histories, told visually, of the people Sacco met in the area. He documents some wickedly complex politics with blocks of text, while showing instantly recognizable images of atrocity that land an emotional punch. Sacco often intersplices different stories to create a composite experience without depersonalizing the narrators. A young Bosnian, Edin, provides Sacco with a through-story. Edin is a party guy when we meet him, but as the book progresses, Sacco learns more and documents more about this everyman's ordeal during the armed conflict. Like an anthropologist, Sacco inserts himself selectively. He includes as an aside that he moved out of the journalists' hotel and onto Edin's couch, becoming a de facto part of the closed community. Published soon after the conflict that it documents, Safe Area Goradze is an intense reading experience and an active call for the condemnation of tribal and international leaders who put politics ahead of humanity.



Brown, Chester. 2003. Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly. This book marked Chester Brown's shift from doing small-circulation autobiographical comics to becoming a bestselling Canadian author. Brown was known amongst indie comic fans for his autobiographical comics, many of which dealt with his mother's schizophrenia. His interest in mental illness serves him well in telling the story of Louis Riel, who led a rebellion of the Metis people in the Red River basin (now Manitoba) against the fledgling nation of Canada in the late 1800s. The school teacher was charismatic in both the metaphorical and ecclesiastical sense, believing toward the end that God was speaking to him directly. While Canadian historians often use the Riel rebellion to explore the roots of core Canadian themes such as identity, sovereignty and regionalism, Brown's personal touch parallels these issues to Riel's state of being, which in turn presents some more universal existential questions. Brown's work has been compared to Harold Gray's thin lines on Little Orphan Annie. While his drawing style does evoke late 19th century comics, Louis Riel does not look visually derivative. His drawings suggest a prim and spare Canadian past while the action conveys urgency to both Riel's efforts to preserve the reality and vitality of the people of the Red River Valley and Canada's efforts to create a nation. Brown builds on this tension to mythologize this aspect of Canadian history but resists romanticizing it. The book has over 20 pages of footnotes, bibliographical information and a detailed index, reinforcing the fact that Brown isn't making any of this up, although he admits to changing some details for dramatic effect.

Thompson, Craig. 2003. Blankets. Marietta, Georgia: Top Shelf. Thompson grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home in Wisconsin but blossoms after meeting Raina, a less conservative girl, at bible camp. His sexual and spiritual awakening is accompanied by flashbacks to his youth that show how he developed his beliefs on these issues in the first place. By the end of the book, he grows apart from Raina and learns how to separate himself from the church without rejecting his family. Blankets signaled the mainstream arrival of the graphic novel as a vehicle for telling slice-of-life stories. The conflicts in the book are real life, rather than epic, and the resolutions take time to develop. Thompson uses a fluid, brush-based drawing style that effectively shows how his past informs his present, and how his present experience puts his past in perspective, for example on pages 406-407, where sitting in bed with Raina reminds him of playing on a bed with his brother, and the seafaring adventures the boys acted out. Thompson sustains a personal tale without falling into navel-gazing, and gives us a level-headed glimpse at a religious culture that is uniquely American.

I would donate a box of high quality "mid-level" graphic novels. That is, not little kiddy stiff, but not adult/mature stuff, either. Titles appropriate for the tweens and teens — that age when people are notorious for falling away from reading and never getting back into the habit again. I want to hook them and keep them hooked. So ....

Age of Bronze (Image): librarians are big on the classics (or they're supposed to be, anyway). I would tell the librarian that this is a great, sneaky way to introduce a reluctant reader to Homer, and eventually all of ancient Greek myth and history.

Avigon: Gods and Demons (Image): yes, it has robots. But (sshh!) it's really a deep philosophical examination of what it means to be human, and the nature of freedom and free will.

Aya (D&Q): a strong heroine, a secretly bigamous husband, a cheating lover, an illegitimate — uh. Okay. It's a soap opera set in 1970s Ivory Coast. But it's a well-crafted, intelligent soap opera!

The Bluesman (NBM): racism is ugly. Music is beautiful. And sometimes music is the only thing that can keep a man going. Any librarian who wants to get her patrons angry and thinking about all the injustices in the world, and how to fix those injustices, will stock this title.

Courtney Crumrin (Oni): because Harry Potter just wasn't dark enough for some people.

Crogan's Vengeance (Oni): come on! Pirates! Lots of pirates! And it's the first in a series exploring the (fictional) history of one family from the 17th all the way through the 20th centuries. The little buggers will be learning history and not even realize it.

Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists (GT Labs): what, I have to justify including a graphic novel about all the great, often forgotten women whose brilliance has added to the collective knowledge of humanity? Didn't think so.

Halo & Sprocket (SLG): a girl, an angel and a robot, all living together as roommates. No, it's not a bad punch line. It's another sneaky way to get malleable brains thinking Big Thoughts about theology, anthropology and lots of other -ologies.

Mouse Guard (Archaia): okay, nothing sneaky here. This is a just a great adventure with great artwork. Translation: fun!

Teenagers From Mars (Gigantic): 'cause, like, the kids will really be able to, like, relate and all.

Vogelein (Fiery Studios): the fairy will hook the girls (and some of the boys) and before they know it, they'll be caught up in an adventure dealing with friendship, betrayal, love, war and loss. The bittersweet mixture will have them coming back for more. And what more could any librarian want?

The first graphic novel I would want to donate to a library would be Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. This book is a comic about comics and should be the starting point for anyone researching the medium for academic purposes. It is also for anyone who simply wants to know more about why comics look they way they do and why we read them a certain way. In short, Understanding Comics is an outstanding resource for newcomers and old hats to the comics medium. Its broad appeal is bound to attract numerous readers, so what better place to provide the invaluable information McCloud has given us than in a library where it can be accessed by all? Additionally, McCloud's second follow-up, Making Comics, synthesizes the information in Understanding Comics and applies it to the creative process, showing us how and why comics creators make their artistic choices. The notion that a creator must connect with their audience is a universal one. It has applications in other mediums, once again proving the broad appeal of McCloud's work. If a library has no other reference books on comics, then these two graphic novels provide an excellent base.


There is one particular graphic novel that got me back into comics after a long absence. Craig Thompson's Blankets is a book that I could not put down from the moment I began reading it. On the surface, it is a "coming of age" story, but the issues of faith, abuse and love that Thompson explores are so complex that Blankets defies expectations. Though not for younger readers, Blankets has earned a spot in the young adult section of any library. I would hope that a teen who has experienced any of the losses or triumphs that Craig, the hero, experiences, would find some sort of comfort in the resolution of the story and the beauty of the art after finding this book at their local library.

A great all-ages read to add to any library would be the recently published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz graphic novel from Marvel, written/adapted by Eric Shanower and illustrated by Skottie Young. This adaptation is loyal to the beloved source, but also adds something new to the standard classic with Young's whimsical and unique artwork. It can be difficult to find comics for children, so I would love to see a true all-ages book available at a library for any all children who might want to read it.

Graphic novels are often at the forefront of artistic commentary on important moments in history, using images and text to explore history in ways that shock and awe readers. Obviously, Maus belongs in any well-stocked library, but I propose that Art Spiegelman's more recent In the Shadow of No Towers deserves equal consideration. While the rest of us were still trying to figure out exactly what had happened to the world after 9/11, Spiegelman was already putting his thoughts on the matter into pictures. More specifically, as newspaper-style broadsheets reminiscent of the "funnies" pages in newspapers. The fact that he published his take on the tragedy and its aftermath in Germany before publishing it here speaks to its controversial nature. Spiegelman's thoughts were not exactly synchronized with public (political) opinion at the time. Yet, In the Shadow of No Towers is not all criticism and op-eds. In fact, like Maus, much of it concerns the search for one's identity following a crisis, and trying to make sense of a senseless world. It is a superb example of the power of the personal narrative, but it is also an important piece of the literature and art dedicated to arguably the most memorable event in the last decade.

Brian K. Vaughan, however, had an entirely different artistic reaction to the 9/11 and the Iraq War, which manifested into Pride of Baghdad, with art by Niko Henrichon. This relatively short graphic novel follows a family of lions who escape from the Baghdad zoo after it had been bombed (and is loosely based on a true occurrence). Though the lions are personified and given voices, this is most definitely not The Lion King. The things that the lions experience in their few days in the wild are brutal and not for the faint of heart, yet there is a reason for this. Vaughan uses the pride's journey to explore freedom, what it means to have it given, taken away, or taken for oneself. The graphic novel is loaded with symbolism and is a choice example of the meaning that can be packed into just a few panels of comic book art. So, for its relevance to the politics and questions of our time, as well as for its innovative and meaningful art, Pride of Baghdad is another graphic novel that would benefit all those library patrons who read it.

Graphic novels can be expensive. Even the most dedicated fans may not have the funds to buy every single comic book that they want to read. Text-only book junkies turn to the library to get their literary fix, but I've yet to meet a library that had an extensive graphic novel collection, if it had one at all. So, if I were donating a stack of graphic novels to a library, I would want that stack to be a diverse selection of the finest works our beloved medium has to offer. In addition to covering a wide variety of themes and genres, the aforementioned graphic novels are the types of books that will encourage readers to seek out even more graphic novels and comic books. They are the perfect stepping stones into a medium that constantly defies genre conventions and knows no limitations.