Comic Book Librarian

The question how to place comics on the shelf so they are easy to find comes up pretty regularly on various groups and discussions that I've seen. So how should one group them? Well first of all, fiction and non-fiction should definitely be separated even if they're both listed as "graphic novels" (which seems to be the catch all term most often used. I prefer comics or comic books myself). I'd make sure to mark them as fiction or non-fiction so that they're easy to distinguish and to avoid any confusion/controversy over a factual book being labeled fiction. I would also keep Manga, comic strips, funnies, cartoons, and other graphic storytelling separate. I say this for a number of reasons. First of all, they're different reading with mostly different groups reading them. Second, the books are all going to be varying in size. Manga for instance tends to be about the size of a paperback book while books with comic strips can be longer books and comic ...

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...

Sometime soon I'll be doing Halloween/Horror recommendations, I promise.. but I'd recently promised to do some helpful sites that might be useful so.. here we go. Comic Book Database  - I mentioned this before, but the Comic Book Database allows you to search for character, creator, comic name, series name, title of comic, and a whole host of other things to find more information. It can be sparse at times or it can have information overload. This is great though if you're looking for every appearance of a character, if a comic is reprinted and where it's reprinted, follow a creator's full works, and a bunch of other stuff. Grand Comics Database  - pretty similar to the one above, but a different interface and they sometimes disagree on things. Both give you a great look at over all comics and can give you tons of information. For personal use, I tend to gravitate towards the Comic Book Database, but that's just my personal choice. Both are great and have a weal...

So someone challenged me recently that none of this remotely matters if it is a trade paperback or if it is a graphic novel.. and someone else expressed frustration in not being able to tell what is reprinted.. This blog post is going to cover both.. so hang on to your seats. Why does it matter? Well simple.. they're different terms and mean different things, just like Anime and Manga mean different things even though they are related and in the same industry. But besides that, there is a difference between say the Sandman graphic novel and the Sandman trades. How? OK.. So Sandman has 11 trades now (From Preludes and Nocturnes to the Wake and then the prequel/ending The Overture ) and there are 2 graphic novels ( Dream Hunters and Endless Nights) The trades tell the serialized story from beginning to end and recent beginning that brings the whole thing full circle again. That story is reprinted from the original series 1-75 and Overture 1-6. This is important to note because a...

One of the reasons I started this blog is I'd noticed a number of librarians on various platforms advocating for comics and coming back to the same small list time and again. Another reason is I've noticed that well let's be honest, that list consists of a majority of Marvel and Image titles with maybe a couple titles, typically one each, of a few other companies and that's it. Those titles would also be whatever has made a big name/splash in the comic world like Lumberjanes , which is amazing by the way, but it's not the only comic Boom! Studios puts out and while Boom! is currently putting out a bunch of titles that are similar, it's not indicative of all Boom! titles. Seriously, don't assume Boom! only does all-age friendly titles because they don't. They, like almost all of the publishers, have a large variety of titles. That said when we're talking comics, we as librarians need to remember that our bubble of comics is not all there is (just ...

I initially had planned to make recommendations on Banned Books Week and as I usual, I started to do some research and I found out that A) I hadn't read all that many banned books, which is bizarre to me since I don't ever filter for content in my life which is why I wasn't aware of the banned books B) there is not that many superhero books that have been banned or challenged and that's what I mostly read. C) The books that are typically banned or challenged are pretty common library books. Sandman , Persepopolis, Y the Last Man , Maus , and Bones  just to name a few. D) and this is the most important one of all, Comic book Legal Defense Fund(CBLDF) , already has a pretty extensive list and they're better experts about censorship than I am. This is literally all they do is fight censorship and legal issues revolving around comics. So, they'd be the people to look at when it comes to Banned Books more so than me. I read comics and I'm a huge fan. I'm an a...

Banned book week is coming up (Septemer 24th-September 30th) and I'm sure you've all got displays in mind, but while you're thinking about displays I've got a few things to remind you about. First of all, I will probably do a recommendation list for Banned Comics next week. For this week, I want to talk about something more important. The time the US government nearly banned the entire medium based on lies. Back in 1948, a man named Frederic Wertham began a full out attack on comic books. He began to study and look at juveniles who were reading comics and their links with violence, drugs, and sex. He posited that comic books were teaching kids to follow this criminal behavior and began an open war against comics. His early attacks lead to the creation of the original Batwoman (Kathy Kane) and Bat-Girl (Betty Kane) to show that Batman and Robin were not homosexual and there was nothing untoward about their relationship. His actions and eventually book, The Seductio...