Comic Book Resources

Screw adults.

Some of my favorite comics are vulgar and inappropriate.

Good on ya for supporting libraries!

I should clarify that it wasn’t as though anyone was trying to get Bonnie shut down. It was just more of a raised-eyebrow, sniffy-expression kind of thing. And certainly not the majority. But the age demographic of how approval or disapproval broke out struck us as amusing, that’s all.

Good on y’all. I never think about it, because back when I was living in a place (Little Rock … well, North Little Rock, technically, but I could use LR’s libraries as well & very much did, though NLR certainly had a nice library as well) that actually believed in funding its library system more or less adequately, I guess graphic novels & such weren’t particularly common on library shelves (& for that matter I hadn’t yet gotten into comics after 2-plus decades away) … but in the absence of comics in grocery stores & drugstores & such, not to mention the absurd pricing levels (can we all just agree that there’s no way a comic should cost more than a coke?) \, I guess there’s some possibility that libraries could represent the future of ensnaring potential young readers far more than LCSes do.

But, as implied above, the library system here (Montgomery, Alabama, a sociocultural backwater so benighted that I swear to god it makes Little Rock look like classical Athens) is so severely underfunded that it has a hard time keeping up its new stock of “real” books. If any of the branches carry GNs, I’m unaware of it. *sigh*

Actually, Dan, I think — I HOPE, anyway — that your status quo is changing across the country. It’s one of the reasons I like to mention these different library things I get involved in.

What Bonnie — and Jennifer and Hayden at the Seattle Library, and Kristen the librarian that comments here, and many, many others — already know, is that kids reading comics is still kids READING. They’re on board. Teachers in public schools are clear on this idea too. It’s the taxpayers-at-large (often the same taxpayers who are crabbing about the public school system) who have trouble with it. And (this is the part that makes me crazy sometimes) comics PUBLISHERS are being very slow to catch on. I think Dark Horse is the only one that’s actively got something in place as an outreach to educators. I could be wrong — I’d love it if I was — but I don’t think I am.

Retailers are picking up some of the slack. Zanadu in Seattle has been very supportive of me, and Spy Comics really helped out Bonnie yesterday. But, y’know, publishers are really the ones that could benefit from this kind of educational effort. How hard would it be, just to take one example, to do a school stop or two in between flying creators to conventions all over the country? Every creator I’ve ever met who did a school or a library thing did it on their own nickel, no publisher ever subsidizes it. (With the exception of Fantagraphics, bless them. And they moved a hell of a lot of Ellen Forney books at the event they brought her to, believe me, it wasn’t wasted time or charity work.)

The example I always think of is Robert Heinlein. You know how so many of us in our 30’s and 40’s started reading science fiction with a Heinlein juvenile? To the point where SF practically was code for “Heinlein” in a teen library? That’s because his publisher, Scribner’s, courted libraries. They asked Heinlein to do library events. They went after that market HARD. Why don’t DC and Marvel ever figure this out?

End of rant. Anyway… the nice thing about the internet is that it puts a lot more of us who do this work in touch with one another, we can network and compare notes and support one another’s events and so on. It helps a lot.

Also, just as an aside? Look at the audience in the class shot, look at the folks sitting behind the volunteer table. Four guys in the class. One guy who was a library volunteer. All the rest were girls and women. Why not pay a little more attention to them, Marvel and DC? Clearly, they WANT to read comics. They could be reading yours if you ever gave them any.

Minx is a start, but they could be doing the hell of a lot better.

Some good thoughts, Greg. I know very well that if wishes were fishes then beggars would ride, or something like that (OK, so I’ve mangled the imagery — hey, life sucks!) but I would like to think that some higher-up at DC or Marvel or Image or Dark Horse or (fill in blank) would realize the importance of the concept &, y’know, create a position dvevoted solely to working with schools &/or libraries.

Like any other fan of a certain age, I guess particularly those who (like me) grew up in small towns that are probably a couple of hours from a comic book store, I often wonder if I’d ever have paid any attention to comics at all without drugstore & grocery store spinner racks. I guess, to some extent, TV cartoons have helped fill that gap … but again, if the nearest actual COMIC is 2 hours away, will that translate into readership? I can’t imagine how, even with internet availability.

But of course that small town I grew up in, & the not-quite-as-small-but-still-nowhere-near-large-enough-to-support-an-LCS college town I wound up in one county over, both have libraries.

(Where, yes, I read plenty of Heinleins growing up. Another good point.)

Great article Greg and your point about libraries as a potential market for publishers is absolutely spot on. In fact, it holds true for publishers of any type of material. I used to work for a small publishing company that produced children’s books. If I remember correctly, the people in marketing told me that there were 70,000 public libraries in North America (meaning the US and Canada). Now these are individual libraries and not sytems (with systems of course the number would be considerably lower). But just imagine if a publisher were to sell a graphic novel to half of these libraries. Heck, even if they were to sell to one-tenth of the libraries, the number would be considerable. Especially considering that when Diamond releases its numbers for graphic novels, most are selling in the 1,000 to 3,000 copy range. Now I realize that these are direct market numbers and not to other retail outlets, but still if you were a publisher and you could double or triple your direct market sales by marketing to libraries, why wouldn’t you? Libraries are certainly an untapped market and one that the current comic book publishers could definetly use.

Hi again! Thanks for blogging about FCBD Greg - we had a great time and I was thrilled to have you and Julie there! My husband and I also saw Iron Man this weekend and loved it. As an added bonus, we saw the teaser for Will Eisner’s The Spirit, and now I have two comic movies in 2009 and to be excited about *crosses fingers for Watchmen*.

As for comics in libraries, I know that I’ve noticed many smaller publishers and independents getting involved with libraries. I think I mentioned on Saturday that Slave Labor Graphics did a great discussion with school librarians several years ago in Mountain View, CA, about the importance of comics. And as I’ve attended San Diego’s Comic Con over the past several years, librarians have been courted, in booths and in panels (yay for my Rex Libris poster and the Unshelved booth). So I think it is a growing trend. We’re still convincing librarians as well as patrons that comics and GNs are worth having in libraries. Things like FCBD help to get the word out. There are lots of librarians who are much more eloquent than me, but that’s my two cents. Thanks!

Dan Bailey - there may be some hope for you in Montgomery. I spoke at the Alabama Library Association Conference in Birmingham on April 24, and there were lots of librarians in my audience. I spoke on gns for YA departments, since that is my specialty, but - there were public and school librarians in the audience. I had handouts with suggested titles for different age groups from preK - 12th grade, and I had another handout with all kinds of resources, print and online, for finding more info on comics and graphic novels. The budget situation is not the library’s fault, okay? I live in the Florida Panhandle, and the budge situation here is just about as dire. So I’ve been pro-active and have donated lots of graphic novels to the local public library.

I’m doing a comic book giveaway using FCBD titles in my school (I’m a part-time school librarian in a Catholic school, and they’re letting me do this!) this week. I’ve donated graphic novels to the school’s library collection here, and they get checked out and read all the time. A number of the teachers are on my side with this, the Principal approved a letter I’ll be sending home suggesting that parents allow their kids to read comics as part of their fun reading. So down here in “Lower Alabama” one school is doing something …

Squee! I’m so looking forward to next week.

I believe Crossgen had a sizable education thing going with trying to get their stuff into schools under the appropriate genres, had suggested lesson plans with the books, etc. Unfortunately, not all their ideas were as good as that one, as they aren’t around anymore.