Guest Entry: Comics and Libraries

Back in June, I mentioned that I'd be getting together at MoCCA with RM, an old friend. I've been friends with RM since middle school, which means I've known him longer than almost anyone else I still talk to on a semi-regular basis. RM is one of those people I envy with regards to comics; he came to the medium late in life with no preconceptions or attachments (at least, in terms of American comics--maybe if people beg, we can get RM to talk about his experiences with manga during his year in Japan). RM asked if he could share his thoughts on comics through this blog, and I couldn't say no--it doesn't seem fair to keep him and his adventures in comics all to myself. Here's RM's first contribution:

A month ago, I left New York City and moved with my wife to the suburbs. That’s a bit of a clichéd thing to do as a newly married New Yorker a few years out of college. Having lived in that city for the better part of the last eight years, I had become accustomed to its bookstores, libraries, museums, parks, coffee shops and music stores—but especially to its bookstores and libraries.

When we moved, one of the first things on my mind was where I would go for my regular fix of browsing time. We discovered in short order that I wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere for my browsing fix. Our town just doesn’t have a bookstore where you can buy the newest Drawn & Quarterly or Top Shelf release, look through the latest issue of McSweeney’s, or have a look at one of the exciting new posthumous publications of Will Eisner. I was feeling pretty down that first week.

Into the breach stepped our public library. On arrival, as I was standing in line to get my library card, I saw a sign with the promising words "Adult Graphic Novels" written on it. (I have never understood why books for grownups in public libraries have to be called "adult books." The "adult" adjective always conjures up a mental glow of neon tubing, parking lots with high fences and eighteen-wheeler trucks. But no matter….)

In this poorly-named Adult Graphic Novels section, I was glad to see that there were some classics and some more or less mandatory mainstream titles: Art Spiegelman’s Maus; Will Eisner’s Contract with God; Craig Thompson’s Blankets and Marjane Satrapi’s new Embroideries, as well as Persepolis I and Persepolis II. There were no surprises there.

Spine after spine, though, called out from the same shelves with the titles of some of the finest book-length things current graphic novel publishing has to offer: Charley’s War, by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun (Titan Books); Ben Katchor’s The Jew of New York (Pantheon); Joe Sacco’s The Fixer (Drawn and Quarterly); The Red Badge of Courage, adapted by Wayne Vansant (Puffin/Penguin). Being a history buff, I was particularly excited to see—and check out and read—Rick Geary’s The Beast of Chicago, The Mystery of Mary Rogers and The Murder of Abraham Lincoln (ComicsLit). The Metamorphosis (Three Rivers Press) and Yossel (IBooks) rounded out the feast I was surprised and delighted to discover. The list could go on for quite a while. Clearly, someone in the ordering department knows what is good and orders it on a regular basis for library patrons, none of whom have to pay a cent. In my first visit to our library, I borrowed close to $200 worth of comics, carried them home in a canvas bag, and brought them back a few days later with legs a little healthier for the walk and a bank account blissfully unaware of my indulgence.

This is where my always-active conscience sat up and asked a few hard questions: as someone who wants to encourage fine work in graphic novel publishing—not to mention the graphic novel writers and designers themselves—shouldn’t I buy them myself, rather than borrow them? To judge by the date-due stamps at the back of the titles I borrowed, ten or fifteen people had already checked out each book I checked out. That borrowing activity, multiplied over dozens of books and thousands of dollars, must point to some serious money in purchases if we take into account all the counties with public libraries throughout this state, let alone the rest of the country. If everyone just borrowed graphic novels from their libraries, wouldn’t that cut off a wide customer base for publishers? Next time I see James Sturm at a comics show down the line, will I be able to look him honestly in the face and say, "I sure did enjoy reading The Golem’s Mighty Swing when I borrowed it from the _______ County Public Library"? I have thought about these questions a bit for the last few days and come up with some tentative answers.

1. Comics in public libraries are something about which the industry and comics-readers everywhere should be happy. As a genre that has suffered for long enough at the wrong end of downward nose-looking, mere presence in library collections—with call numbers, in catalogues, and on shelves—shows that the medium has achieved a kind of legitimacy in a place where it might not have been much respected previously.

2. Libraries house permanent collections, and this means that a decade down the line a short-run graphic novel that might be harder to find than dodo’s feathers will still be available to borrow and read at no cost. People also inevitably encounter new things in the permanent collections of libraries. A significant number of the authors whose work I enjoy now and couldn’t imagine never having known were chance discoveries during library browsing. (In fact, my strong interest in graphic novels over the last two years or so was spurred by my discovery of Chester Brown’s Louis Riel in the permanent collection at my undergraduate university’s library.) So the incorporation of graphic novels into public library collections has the important potential to broaden the audience going forward.

3. Libraries are no threat to the publishing industry. They place large, consistent orders, and always pay their bills. When particular subject areas are used with any degree of high traffic, libraries buy more books in order to help meet what turns out to be a demonstrated interest. If every public library in the country were to buy a handful of graphic novels in each calendar year, I am convinced that the publishing industry itself would be thrilled—because there are more than ten thousand public libraries in the United States. Since not all library-users are comics readers, and not all comics buyers are library-users, the industry would see a net growth in the number of books being bought.

4. Comics collectors will continue to be comics collectors, whether or not they read some of their titles from borrowed collections. There is significant overlap among groups of people who read, buy and borrow books. I may borrow a particular author’s first novel, and like it so much that I buy his or her second, third and fourth novels—for myself, or as gifts for friends, etc. The same thing can and will undoubtedly happen as graphic novels make their way into borrowing collections. And when I plan to meet a graphic novelist, I will still buy a clean copy of a newly-released title and ask him or her to sign it.

5. Graphic novel readers are an impatient lot, preserving some of the intensity and immediacy of interest that made nineteenth-century American readers of Dickens wait at ports for ships to dock so that they could read the latest installment of his serialized plots. When it comes to wanting a new release, comics shops and online ordering will prevail over library patrons waiting for a title to possibly appear on their shelves. I am waiting for two hardcover graphic novels from Drawn and Quarterly this week, both of which I pre-ordered through amazon.com in hopes of having them well in advance of the library.