Comic Book Librarian

It's October, so time for some good Halloween and Horror recommendations. Scary Godmother  by Jill Thompson - This series started out as more of kids picture books and became a comic later, but it's still in the comic community and printed by a comic company. The books have been reprinted a few times, but recently were collected in one large collection with the comics in another collection. The basic story is about Hannah Marie, a young girl who is frightened by her cousin and his friends on Halloween. This leads Hannah to meeting her Scary Godmother, a Halloween version of a fairy godmother (and we find out later Scary was trained as a fairy godmother and witch). Scary helps Hannah frighten her cousin and his friends and then Hannah begins adventures in a world of Halloween with monsters and ghouls as her best friends. Manifest Destiny  by Chris Dingess, Matthew Roberts and Owen Gieni - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark take a rag tag band of soldiers and criminals to sc...

Here's a list I've cobbled together of great comic stories where Nazis get smashed. Mind you this is not going to be a list of things like the silly America blindly throws herself into a time portal to go back and change her own history, ends up in World War II and randomly punches Hitler, who is on the battlefield for completely unknown and unexplained reasons. Nope, this is unadulterated Nazi smashing and destroying. Some are just fun and some are more thought provoking. So now.. onto the list! Time Bomb   by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Paul Gulacy - Time Bomb is a sci-fi fun adventure where a group of modern day military men and women are sent back in time to Nazi Germany to stop a fail safe weapon created to destroy the world if the Nazis lose. It's insane fun. Don't expect too much depth or anything in this story. Just run with the fun of smashing Nazis and blowing them up. It's seriously Inglorious Basterds  type fun, only with sci-fi elements and mo...

Marvel has quite a few shows in the works. I'm going to try to do recommendations for the ones we know are coming. Obviously the shows themselves may not last or even happen as planned, but here's what we've got. Inhumans: Inhumans  by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee - seriously this is the definitive Inhumans work. It's beautiful written and handled. Every character gets a chance to shine. This series really focuses on who the Inhumans are as characters and their society as the Inhumans must deal with a threat from within and from without at the same time with surprising results. There is really no other Inhumans story that captures them as well or comes close to this. Cloak & Dagger: This is a harder one. Going off what I'm seeing from the trailer, the Cloak and Dagger comics are nothing like the show will be. The show seems to be more about teen angst and a Romeo & Juliet type story with the government after them. The comic, however, is about two runaways who ...

I'm sure you've noticed that I kind of bounce around. I'm sorry, but as this is pretty totally a one sided conversation, I have to hit topics when I think of them and when I'm interested to expound on them rather than just when I'm scheduled to do so. I'm sure this makes for more interesting reading or so I tell myself. Again though if there is something you want me to talk about, please let me know. If you're not aware, there has been a recent sort of call to arms and outrage about comic books tackling political issues particularly at Marvel and DC. Some have claimed that certain writers and comics have become little more than political rants with little trappings of story. Others have decided that anything with the slightest reference to politics or religion is an absolute war against a political opponent. And let's just be open here while some of this is true, some of it is pure hogwash. For example, the recent Steve Trevor one-shot released to ...

I really had planned to only do the 4 earlier posts, but it's Pride Month and I still have other things I can recommend that don't really fall into any of the earlier categories. This post will be about books that have LGBTQ characters in the supporting cast. Basically the books I'm going to mention have LGBTQ characters who have a decent story (often with a coming out story), but don't drive the story over all. Sometimes that means they have one major scene and are just there supporting and being supported over the course of the series or sometimes their role is more prominent at times than others, but again their story doesn't dominate the series as it's not really about them. Make sense? I hope so. Now onto the recommendations: X-Force/X-Statix   by Peter Milligan and Mike Allred - Sadly the only way this is available at the moment is in an over-large Omnibus edition which many libraries would be reluctant to lend out due to cost and the fact that the...

Back again with the 4th round of recommendations.. So this list is books that have an ensemble of different LGBTQ characters. So with no further ado, here they are: Secret Six (first run)  by Gail Simone and various artists - This includes Villains United, Murder for Money, Cat's Cradle  and Caution to the Wild  for all 36 issues plus the mini that started it all and yes.. you want them all. Contains: bisexual man , bisexual woman,  lesbians,  and  genderqueer  characters So to start off this rag tag band of misfits were a group of villains that refused to join all of the other villains in the world as they teamed up and the Secret Society of Villains didn't take to highly to them doing that, so they tried to have them killed. The Secret Six of course resisted, fought back, and won despite their power sets. It's a really fun romp all around and it has some nice emotional moments and backstabbing fun. In case you're wondering, Catman (Thomas Bl...

First of all, let me say that I'm not lumping these groups together because they're all the same. They obviously aren't and it's not any attempt to downplay any of the people or groups represented. It is just sadly there are less characters in this group that get their own stories. Also don't forget next post will be for ensemble casts, so these are stories that have several queer characters. You'll see more characters there. Now onto the show.. Jughead vol 1 and 2   by Chip Zdarsky - This series obviously made waves as it was announced that Archie's best pal. Jughead is asexual. It's kind of been a hinted at thing for years as Jughead never really had a major love interest or crush other than burgers and so Chip Zdarsky made it official. This is a great all ages book with typical Archie humor and drama. I mean it's Jughead.. what more do you want me to say? Astro City Private Lives  by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, and Alex Ross - This ...

Ok.. on to the next recommendation list. Again, focusing on bisexual female and lesbian leads/major characters, but mostly leads. The first was gay/bi men (aka male/male relationships), this one will be lesbian/bi female (aka female/female relationships), trans*, queer, intersex, and asexual will be next and a final installment with books that just have a lot of everything. Again I'm putting lesbian and bisexual female characters together for the simple fact of female/female relationships would appeal to similar readers. That's all. So onto the list shall we? First up is Harley Quinn. Most of her books will work as there has been a strong subtext that she and Poison Ivy were more than just friends since she first appeared, but it's recently been confirmed in the Amanda Conner/Jimmy Palmiotti run that she is in fact bisexual and in a finally happy and healthy relationship with Pamela Isley aka Poison Ivy. It's a wacky fun series and Harley has recently gained a g...

I feel like I'm running behind on a lot of stuff right now, so there will probably be a few posts this week to make up for it. Sorry about that,. So June is typically considered Pride Month in the US, though local areas may have their own pride at different times. I'm going to start doing a series of posts on LGBTQIA comics that I recommend, but I'm going to do this a little differently. My idea is to break it down into parts, the first focusing on gay and bi men, then lesbians and bi women, then trans*, queer, intersex and asexual, then  finally circle back and focus on books that do a bit of all of them well (namely team books). I want to do it this way for a couple of reasons. First, while LGBTQIA is a community for various reasons, each individual group has it's own wants/needs/desires, so a book with a lesbian lead may not speak to an asexual teen as well as another book. The second reasons is to highlight some of the areas where comics as a medium are lacking ov...

So the Black Lightning trailer has already hit the internet and if you haven't seen it.. well go see it. Right here . I'll wait. Promise. OK seen it now? Awesome right? I'm stoked. There are a couple reasons for that, but yes we're going to have an African-American live action hero from DC/Marvel on actual TV. On top of that... well here's a mild spoiler.. it's in the trailer, so again.. if you haven't seen the trailer.. this is your last chance to go see it before I spoil something for you.. So here we go: Black Lightning is married with 2 daughters, Anissa Pierce and Jennifer Pierce, they become heroes in their own right as Thunder and Lightning. So we are getting basically 3 African-American heroes in this show off the bat. Also, if they follow comics.. Anissa is a lesbian, so DC TV just went even more female queer. Also announced are Titans and Young Justice on DC's streaming option, whatever that is going to be. So I'm going to do reco...

As you all know (or should know.. if you don't you will now), the Wonder Woman movie is hitting theaters June 2nd (or maybe June 1st depending on where you live). Either way, it's coming soon. DC has also officially announced that June 3rd is Wonder Woman day! Participating comic book stores will be giving out free Wonder Woman comics and cardboard tiaras and bracelets. The Wonder Woman merchandise and advertisements are all blitzing big now and while it may be difficult to get some new items right now in time for Wonder Woman, here are some Wonder Woman comics and books about Wonder Woman I recommend. Legend of Wonder Woman Etta Candy tries to find the perfect outfit for Wonder Woman Legends of Wonder Woman  by Renae de Liz and Ray Dillon. This is a perfect all ages origin book for Wonder Woman. Starts off with her as a child on Themyscira and follows her all the way through her becoming Wonder Woman in World War II. It's a really beautifully drawn book and the story...

This is a new segment I'm going to do on things to look out for in the future. I'm doing this as a kind of recommendation, also kind of speculation about what is going to be hot/good to jump in on board on. See, I read comics monthly like most fans rather than trade waiting (that is what we call it when you wait for a collected edition of several issues to come out usually months after the actual comics are done). This way I can recommend cool things and not have to always wait until last minute to find out the name of the trade to tell you to go buy that.. cause that's not always the best way to do it (covers change, things get pushed back last minute, ect). So onto the Comics to look out for: Unstoppable Wasp   by Jeremy Whitley and Elsa Charretier - Unstoppable Wasp is about Nadia Pym, daughter of Hank Pym and his first wife, Maria Trovaya. Nadia was raised in the Red Room, the same extreme Russian training facility that the Black Widows (yes there are a few) were tra...