Q&A: Librarianship's Graphic Novel Experts
By Martha Cornog Jul 29, 2010The explosion of graphic novels has led to five recent books by librarians: Francisca Goldsmith's The Readers' Advisory Guide to Graphic Novels, David Serchay's double-helping The Librarian's Guide to Graphic Novels for Children and Tweens and The Librarian's Guide to Graphic Novels for Adults, Robert Weiner's Graphic Novels and Comics in Libraries and Archives, and Graphic Novels Beyond the Basics, edited by me and my otaku husband, Tim Perper.
I contacted my fellow authors to swap boasts and kvetches about the writing experience, and Francisca (FG), David (DS), and Rob (RW) were quite happy to dive into a discussion. Francisca (third from left) is Instructional Design Consultant for the Infopeople Project, San Mateo, CA; David (far right) is Youth Services Librarian for the Margate Branch of the Broward County Library System, FL; Rob (far left) is Assistant Humanities Librarian, Texas Tech University, Lubbock; and I, Martha (second from left), write LJ's Graphic Novels column with Steve Raiteri.
1) What was the first comic or graphic novel that grabbed you hard as a kid, or whenever?
FG: My mother read the evening comics page aloud to me until I could read it independently, starting when I was about four. She loved "Dennis the Menace," and that became the first book of comic-strip collections I bought, in New York City's FAO Schwartz, when I was about five. Other early fascinations were Max und Moritz and Struwwelpeter, ancient copies of which one of my brothers had left behind. After that, it was a stream of Little Lulu's, Tarzan adaptations, New Yorker collections, and volumes featuring an order of nuns who punned horribly. Anyone have an idea about who created that one?
DS: I don't think there was one specific comic. I've been reading them for as long as I can remember. When I was little in the 1970s, I was lucky enough to have a comic shop (the Superhero Shop) in the local mall. Later I became an active collector, buying things like Watchmen and The Dark Knight off the shelf. There have been a lot of great titles over the years, some of which even if I have to sell off my collection are going to be kept.
RW: I remember an old issue of Legion of Superheroes that affected my young mind. One of the characters died, possibly Chemical Boy. I have not read the issue since I was a child, but it haunts me to this day. Obviously, Marvel plays a big role in my life (see my two previous books: Marvel Graphic Novels: An Annotated Guide and Captain America: The Struggle of the Superhero, both published by McFarland). Some of the first Marvel comics I read include the Human Fly, Moon Knight, 3-D Man, and Black Panther. Specific comics include Avengers No. 10, Fantastic Four No. 49, and The Silver Surfer No. 1. The Silver Surfer as a character still resonates with me: He holds up, as do those original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby stories.
MC: I read Mickey Mouse and Mighty Mouse comic books, and many of the newspaper funnies of fame like Li'l Abner and Steve Canyon. Above all, I went groupie for that glam goddess Brenda Starr. I'd be cosplaying Brenda today if I could figure out how to get those sparkles in my eyes. Sequins on the eyelids, maybe? For a spell in my twenties, I dyed my hair red in honor of Brenda-and Anne of Green Gables.
2) Your books all hit aspects of graphic-novels-in-the-library concerns that hadn't been written about quite that way before. Did you start out interested in a topic, then realize there weren't books on precisely that topic, or did you go hunting for gaps in published information?
FG: It was something in between for me: I was doing a lot of work with reader's advisory staff training and was oh-so tired of the perception that graphic novels-and comics more generally-were being relegated to a kind of young adult ghetto in too many libraries. My first book on graphic novels, Graphic Novels Now! (ALA Editions, 2005), was marketed to those serving teens, although I was already noting there that the readership isn't teen-specific. My intention with The Readers Advisor's Guide to Graphic Novels was to make ever more explicit the fact that any content can fill this format.
DS: I had given talks about the topic for many years and had written about it here and there, but had always wanted to write a book. An acquisitions editor at Neal-Schulman knew about my previous work and asked me to submit a proposal for a book on graphic novels in libraries, but focusing on tweens (which I expanded to include children). It was while working on that book that I suggested a second book focusing on the opposite end of the age spectrum. There were a lot of important works-such as A Contract with God, Watchmen, and Sandman-that I couldn't give more than a brief mention to in Tweens that I thought were worthy of more discussion. And while graphic novels in libraries have been getting more respect, they are still seen as something for children and teens only. I wanted to change that perception.
RW: In the case of Graphic Novels in Libraries and Archives, I knew there was much published in the library literature/Internet, but no real book that brought together a wide variety of viewpoints. My colleague Brian Quinn, a social sciences librarian, suggested that since I'd done all this work on graphic novels and comics, that I should do something on graphic novels and comics as it relates to libraries. He argued (rightly so) that it would be good career-wise (as a librarian) and that I'd be contributing something really valuable to the library literature and profession by doing such a project. When I looked around, there was nothing like the book I was interested in putting together and editing. McFarland was keen on the project-so there you go. My volume offers perspectives from all aspects of librarianship and includes the history of comics in libraries (American and Japanese); articles related to public, academic, and school libraries; and an archival study to boot.
MC: I was hunting for ponds without frogs, that is, gaps in the literature. There has been little available for librarians, for example, on girl-friendly comics as such, comics from Europe, or comics in academic libraries, so I made those subjects gotta-have chapters in my book with Tim. Most recently, Rob's book adds a great deal more to this last area.
3) All of you have done several books, mostly about comics. What was different or most difficult about the one just published?
FG: One of the things I encountered during the writing of The Readers Advisor's Guide was the rush of excellent titles emerging during the years I was writing it. While much of the volume isn't bibliographies, the lists that are included had to be updated moment by moment as new stuff appeared that couldn't be neglected. Not a bad problem to have!
DS: The content of the reviewed books were different. I went from kid-friendly to books with language, nudity, and sex. And there were a few publishers that I contacted for the first book and not the second and vice versa. The most difficult aspect came in dealing with the sections that contained the same information in both books (purchasing, cataloging, shelving, etc). I wanted to make sure that the information was provided in both without making it too redundant for those who bought both books. In some cases, it had the same information but with different book examples or quotes, and there were a few things, including a couple of anecdotes, that I put in both.
RW: Many of the authors discussed canon in terms of graphic novels, such as Watchmen and Maus, as well as some of the pivotal work of Randall Scott, Allen Ellis, Francesca Goldsmith, Scott McCloud, and Michelle Gorman, among others. So I was afraid of too much overlap in the pieces covering the same ground, but luckily each author put a new spin on his/her essay so the essays still retain their originality. What this tells us, however, is that comics scholarship within the library world and the general academy is still in its infancy. It has exploded in the last ten years and continues to grow. Publications like the International Journal of Comic Art and the new Journal of the Graphic Novel and Comics provide excellent scholarship.
4) What do you think of electronic formats for comics a la on the iPad and iPhone? Do you see or know of libraries doing anything with mobile and web formats for graphic narratives?
FG: Comics, like other reading, belongs in both traditional and new containers, the better to serve the widest variety of readers. My preference in web comics is the sort that doesn't ignore its medium, rather than simply using cyberspace as a bulletin board for what could essentially be a print production. Mobile devices necessarily have smaller screen areas, so what appears there needs to play to the medium's attributes. As an Eisner judge this year, I was fascinated by the approaches my judging colleagues and I took to the web comics category. I don't think libraries are approaching this seriously yet, for the same reasons it took years for them to approach comics on paper seriously: the format continues to be marginalized when contrasted with either scholarly nonfiction or best seller genre mass marketing.
DS: I'm not really into reading comics online with the exception of a few online strips like Unshelved and Least I Can Do. I do like, however, some older and hard-to-find material that is available through databases like Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels from Alexander Street Press.
RW: I think it's exciting. One of the subjects I was adamant that someone write about in my book was libraries and webcomics. So many webcomics appear and disappear; how can libraries deal with that? The mobile apps for comics are great and provide a nice addition to the graphic novel and traditional magazine comic. Keep in mind that the magazine comic/floppy is really a niche market now, but graphic novels seem to be growing year after year. So electronic formats and mobile apps are just another way to reach readers. People like having choices, so I think librarians should be involved with the electronic formats for comics.
5) What's your pet peeve about librarians, or nonlibrarians, regarding comics? What's the one thing that you get asked so often that you would like to wear the answer on a T-shirt?
FG: Actually, two things: comics being essentially for kids always irritates me when asserted, but these days I hear that more from nonlibrarians than from my own profession. I thank David; Rob; you, Martha; and other critics in our profession for waking up the biblioworld. As to the T-shirt, I think mine would say, "We're not all about 746.5, you know!" And the back would say, "It's a format, not a genre."
DS: Don't have one.
RW: That a Spider-Man story can have as many plot twists and turns as a novel by Tolstoy, Dickens, or a Shakespeare play. In reading a sequential art story, you have to use both sides of your brain. Comics are an important part of our history as Americans, and it is nothing to be ashamed of in 2010. I think we have come a long way in realizing that comics do not dumb down anything for readers, but we are not completely away from that stereotype yet.
MC: For me, it would be "Graphic novel doesn't mean X-rated!" I don't get that assumption from librarians, though.
6) What was the most surprising new thing you learned while writing your last book for librarians?
FG: When I was composing a themed list of graphic novels that talk about or use as setting traditional religions and spiritual concerns, I wasn't surprised at how readily I could find Jewish ones; there's a lot of work about the high representation of Jewish creators in the comics field. But I had a devil of a time scrounging up ones in which Catholicism was treated as anything but a font of political evil. Of course, Gene Yang gives that faith a positive treatment, but trying to make this list judiciously rounded was surprisingly (to me) difficult.
DS: For my chapter on graphic novels in academia, I did a survey of the comic scholar's e-list on graphic novels-themed college courses. I was surprised on the range of topics. Not only were the expected "comics as literature," art, and library courses, but also ones on rhetoric, psychology, and the cultural aspects of comics. There were also some areas of comics history that I had not previously known about that I found very interesting.
RW: For me, it was the interest of academic librarians. I knew that public and school libraries have been working with graphic novels in earnest over the last 20 years or so. What surprised me was that the biggest section in Graphic Novels in Libraries and Archives was related to academic libraries. I really did not expect that when I put out the call for articles. I think that for the longest time, academic libraries wanted nothing to do with comics or graphic novels because they were considered lowbrow. However, I guess now that comics and graphic novels are being used in so many courses, and they have a high rate of circulation, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Here at the Texas Tech University Library, our graphic novels are constantly being used.
MC: For me, it was that some librarians encounter more objections to graphic novels from other library staff than from patrons.
7) Rob, your forthcoming book is about James Bond and popular culture (James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films Are Not Enough, Cambridge Scholars Publishing). What do you think of the James Bond graphic novels?
RW: Marvel, Dark Horse, and others have published Bond-related comics over the past 20 years; I think it's great that Bond continues to receive the sequential art treatment.
I love the comic reprints of those original Bond newspaper strips (which began in the late 1950s). Hats off to Titan for doing it! Those were so rare and impossible to find until Titan started republishing them. The original newspaper adaptations of the Fleming novels are truer to the spirit of the Ian Fleming novels than the films were. Every Bond fan should read them. I also enjoy the SilverFin adaptation.
8) David, you did two books back to back. Did you do these like Peter Jackson did The Lord of the Rings: gather all the material together, then edit into several works with similar underpinnings or approach them as separate books entirely?
DS: I submitted the proposal for the second book very early on, since I figured that while researching I would come upon information that might be good for the second book and didn't want to have to search for it again. Once the second book was approved, I put the "Adult only" notes in a special file, but in writing Tweens I concentrated only on that book. A good thing was there were certain things that I had to cut out of the first book for space reasons that I was able to incorporate into the second one. And having gone through the process of writing the first book, I had a better idea of what to do and what not to do for the second one.
9) Francisca, when you wrote Graphic Novels Now! in 2005, did you foresee that the topic would become so important to librarianship that you'd be doing another book about graphic novels in fewer than five years?
FG: Actually, yes. I contracted for The Readers Advisor's Guide back in 2007, because the burgeoning interest in graphic novels in libraries was well underway-again, thanks to folks like you, David, Rob, Michele Gorman, Mike Pawuk, and other writer librarians.
10) What do you think of how librarians are represented in comics? We go from humor in Unshelved to current events in Alia's Mission: Saving the Books of Iraq, alternate futures in Library Wars, and mystical realities in The Night Bookmobile. What's your favorite library-themed title?
FG: All the ones you've mentioned would be on my list of favorites, as is Jason Shiga's Bookhunter. One of the things I so like about comics about libraries is the very diversity-a fine example of what comics can be and what libraries should be.
DS: I love Unshelved. I identify strongly with Dewey. For librarians in the comics, my two favorites are Lucian from Sandman whose library consists of every book ever thought up, even if not completed (the completed ones being located in a small annex), and Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, and Oracle, the only superhero with (one guesses) an MLS.
RW: Anyone who has ever worked in a library can appreciate the beauty of Unshelved. I also love that librarians are being represented in books like Alia's Mission with such a powerful story. It lets us know that despite all the advances in technology and digital content the librarian's primary mission has remained the same: to preserve humanity's collective memory, whether in print or digitally.
MC: I have a real soft spot for Rex Libris, who confronts Space Warlord Vaglox to retrieve an overdue copy of Principia Mathematica. Lots of serious butt-kicking and bibliogeekery.
