>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
>> Welcome to our noon program.
This is one of a series of programs, the Serial
and Government Publications Division tries to hold
as they relate to our collections.
This time, we're celebrating our comic book collection once again.
And some of you may know or not that in August of 2011,
the Library signed an agreement with the Small Press Expo
and that has given us the ability to collect from independent publishers
of comic books and comic art.
And in fact, it gives us the ability
to collect all the SPX Ignatz Awards, all the winners.
This will be our third year going to that conference and collecting
and bringing back to the Library materials as such
as the ones that we have on display.
We are fortunate to have Heidi MacDonald with us.
She has been an observer of the comic book industry and a supporter
of the Small Press publishers.
In fact, this past spring,
she donated her own mini-comics collection to the Library
and we have it in our division safely in a vault and some
of those comic books are on display for you to see later on.
Her collection has at 570 pieces so it's pretty extensive
and we really are happy to have it.
It is the second one of a special collection that we acquired
through our connection with SPX.
Some of you may have been here last year when Dean Haspiel was here
to do his presentation and he, too,
gave us his special mini-comics collection.
So today, Heidi is going to be talking with us
about the development of the graphic novel,
a topic for which she is ideally suited.
Some of you may know, I think probably most of you know
that she is the editor of the news blog comic book blog, The Beat.
If you haven't been to it, it's really a good blog.
It has lots of good information about publishers, writers,
new reviews, all sorts of things.
So it's really good.
She also is the comics review editor at Publisher's Weekly
and then this part is amazing to me, since 1982,
she has been a contributing writer to the Comics Journal.
So eminently qualified, let's welcome Heidi MacDonald.
[ Applause ]
>> [Inaudible]?
Will you use the monitor?
>> Well thank you so much, Georgia.
Thank you, everybody.
I'm going to twiddle.
I can't resist.
Oh, it just does not want to stay online.
So all right.
Well, thank you very much for having me here and for having --
accepting my collection which you know, we normally kind of think
of them -- we're all packrats in the comic book industry.
So you know, having a box of these objects
around that I treasured very much and being able to find a place
like the Library of Congress to house them and to enable them
to be seen by future generations is absolutely thrilling,
needless to say.
And to have it housed here is very inspiring.
I will say as a packrat, it is very difficult to get rid of things.
On the day that Warren Bernard of SPX came to pick up the collection,
we went through my storage unit and an afternoon was spent moving boxes,
finding things, going through them.
You know, they are packed up to be transitioned and Warren got his car
and the boxes were put into the trunk and I saw them
and I was like, "Oh, well."
I guess I, you know, it's better to let go of things.
But I felt sad because I'm a packrat and you know, here at the Library
of Congress is really based on the wonderful deeds
of packrats through the ages.
So I came home, I turned on the television on the History Channel.
There was a special on the Library of Congress
that explained how the wonderful acts of preservation are done here,
the care that is taken, the amazing holdings, the bunkers full
of incredible priceless materials.
And I was like, "Well, you know what?
I am now part of that.
So it was meant to be."
So despite the fact that I am talking
about I donated my mini-comics to the Library of Congress,
I'm actually talking about graphic novels today
which are the longer versions of comics and ironically.
And why am I doing graphic novels?
Well as mentioned, Georgia mentioned that I am reviews editor
of Publisher's Weekly and I, for the past 10 years
and I've seen quite a bit of the development
of the graphic novel through that.
And what I wanted to talk about is people know ITMaus and Watchmen
and a few other books I will mention that are very well known.
And so I kind of wanted in my own idiosyncratic kind
of my own personal talk, talk about some other books
that I feel are very influential
and have a great novelistic literary value that kind of have contributed
to the development but aren't quite as well known.
So let me see if -- I am not PC conversant
so it's always a little difficult for me here
but what we'll do is, well yes, okay.
I do want to talk a little bit about myself
because I've donated my collection.
So yes, from an early age, I liked to wear a cape, as you can see here.
And you know, despite the incredible saying, there wasn't a thing to wear
but I guess I always had the, you know, early cosplay which cosplay
of course is costume play as you dress up.
Everybody sees them at the Comic-Con now.
And can people hear me, by the way?
You can hear me in the back row?
All right.
So you know, we'll just drink some water and keep going.
Now people, Lisa Donnelly, she asked me earlier on the elevator coming
up here, "How did you get into comics?"
I said, "Well, come to the slideshow and you'll find out."
But my mother was a cartoonist, Suzanna Lasker.
Now, she signs her name SUZU.
She was an early underground cartoonist, you know,
not extensively but she did do some comics.
She really was -- is more into painting,
that's always been her first love.
This is one of her more recent works.
I love this one.
So you know, people read this [inaudible].
I'm going to read it to you.
"Some storm, hey Ma?"
"You call this a storm?
One time a northeastern [inaudible] blew
in the dinghy stove in the outhouse."
"Some storm, hey Ma?"
[Laughter] So yes, you laughed at my mother's cartoon.
All right.
So I love this.
She's a really amazing person.
Now, she does a lot of political posters and protests every week
at the State House in Maine where she lives.
Anyway, as an early comics reader, these were my beloved treasures,
Donald Duck, Carl Barks and John Stanley whose literary value is,
I believe, proven by the fact that he remained in print for so long.
And they were definitely short stories, just eight or ten pages
but on the themes of greed especially Carl Barks' work was
always about money and Little Lulu, you know,
the early sexual equality of Lulu and you know, fighting the boys
and coming out, winning on her own terms.
She was my early hero.
But then I got into superhero comics
and these are -- I found these photos.
These are pretty amazing.
This is me as a teenager at an early New York Comic-Con going
through the stacks.
And you know, this photo really makes it look like I'm surrounded
by people who are amazed that there's a girl going through comics.
I don't think it was quite like that but maybe it wasn't that different.
But you know, I'm so like dedicated to finding my back issue
of The Defenders there and I actually still own that shirt.
So I did say I was a packrat.
So this is a little bit later, a little more cosplay, I guess.
This is the 80's.
Batman was big at the late 80's.
And here is San Diego Comic-Con circa 1990.
This is how we partied back then.
As you could see, not quite like the celebrity-studded although
that is Bill Moomey from Lost in Space.
That's not Bill Moomey.
That's me.
I'm dancing with Len Win, the creator of Swamp Thing.
But yeah, Bill Moomey's playing but anyway,
that's the San Diego Comic-Con back in the day.
Let's see, oh just -- I worked at Disney and I cosplayed.
This is Halloween at the Walt Disney lot.
I wasn't afraid to dress up.
I wish I'd had it the other way
because you can see the Seven Dwarves facade
by Michael Graves but anyway.
And here, this is my first published work
at the Comics Journal, yes, 1982.
I had forgotten until I put together this slideshow
that the first published work I had was in this magazine
that had Carl Barks, my favorite cartoonist of all time in the cover.
I had actually forgotten that until just
when I was putting these together.
So I mean, at the time, it must have just been the most exciting thing
possible for me to now be united with Carl Barks.
And I feel that's in comics, one of the reasons why I've stuck with it
for so long is because it's very approachable
and if anybody's planning to go to Small Press Expo this weekend,
I mean, there's so many great cartoonists who are here for it.
And just the fact that you can go up and talk to these creators
and they're so personable.
I mean, it's a very collegial atmosphere.
This was another piece of my first cover story.
I didn't like fight scenes which there's a lot of them
in superhero comics but already at this point, very early in my career,
I had begun to tire of the troupes of fight scenes
and was analyzing them in terms of the WWE and you know,
why fights in wrestling and fights
in comics were you know, both boring.
So anyway, I had another Amazing Heroes Preview Special,
another thing I worked on.
I went and worked at DC Adventures, you know, some way or another,
we thought that putting Daisy,
Minnie and Jessica Rabbit all mooning
over Jason Priestley somehow created some kind
of you know, aesthetic here.
I don't know.
That was weird.
Probably in mainstream comics,
my best-known work is I just edited it, Y: The Last Man.
I had nothing to do with it except editing it.
But I will say even last weekend, two people told me the first comic
that they had read was Y: The Last Man
and it really got them hooked on it.
And that's always been what I've wanted to do.
I've always wanted to produce material that you don't have
to be an expert in comics or you don't have
to be versed in continuity.
That's something you could just pick up from the first page, say,
"This is a good story, and I want to read it all the way
through to the last page."
So I'm very happy to say the creators of Y: The Last Man,
Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, I think they succeeded
at that admirably and so the book is about,
in case somebody doesn't know, it's about another kind
of hackneyed situation where all the men
on earth have died except one, and him and his monkey.
And they go around but in a female-dominated society.
But the thing that makes it interesting is
that it was about sociology.
It was about what happens when there are no men.
It wasn't just about, oh my God, I've got all these women now.
So it was a very smart book
and I think that's why people respond to it very well.
Anyway, now as mentioned, this is my website,
www.comicsbeat.com so please check it out.
And anyway, now the development of the graphic novel.
So as you could tell from my interest
in progressing beyond fight scenes and creating works
that have more interest to general audience, the graphic novel --
it's been around for a long, long time.
Some people might say cave paintings were graphic novels,
early graphic novels but what makes it a novel?
What makes it more than just a short story or an incident
or a vignette or whatever?
Well, I mean we know with novels,
what they are and I mean, I put this.
Of course, when you read a great book,
you have the feeling of accomplishment.
You have a feeling of sadness and yet joy when you turn the page
of a great book because you've seen the complexity.
You've seen the characters go from one stage to another
and you've seen the theme played out.
And of course, there's that feeling of catharsis and great works of art
which is where we purge our own emotions through them.
So in comics, there are a great many stories that have these things
but in terms of the graphic novel, I mean, there are many.
So what I'm about to say is not the be-all
and the end-all of graphic novels.
These are just some of my favorites
that I feel have these elements to them.
Some of them have been more influential than others.
Some of them are not as well known.
Some are very well known.
But just to talk about them a little bit.
So let's see.
Well, I'll start out --
this is generally A Contract with God by Will Eisner.
Generally considered to be the first graphic novel in America.
Now was it not really, I mean, people go back and forth.
It certainly was the first graphic novel
that said it was a graphic novel and was considered to kind of develop
that -- it kind of planted the flag and said, "This is a book.
It's not a 32-page comic.
It's an actual book that has a theme and plot and characters.
It has a more elevated tone to it."
And it's been very influential since then but I feel Will Eisner
where it kind of comes and goes.
He was a guy who did the spirit sections of the 40's.
He was kind of versed in the genre trappings
but his storytelling was a lot more elevated.
So I think if you read A Contract with God now, I think,
a lot of the arguments against it is that it does have a lot
of melodrama and stereotypes.
I think when you know that the first story is
about a man whose daughter dies and he kind of turns against God.
And well, you know that Eisner's own daughter died
so this was a reaction against it.
I think actually knowing the back story kind
of gives it a little bit more power
which is not actually what it should be.
It should be all in the page but anyway.
Aside from that, I call these the big seven that if you've heard
of a graphic novel, how many of you have heard of a book on this list?
So yes, right, okay.
Like if you've heard of a graphic novel, it's probably one of these.
So I'm not even going to enumerate them but I put the dates there
so you could kind of see how they developed.
Obviously, Watchmen, The Dark Knight, Maus all came
out around the same time.
Very influential, all of them complicated themes.
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi probably kicked off what I would
call the modern graphic novel, the literary graphic novel.
Published in France in 2000, came out here in 2003, obviously the --
it's a story about a young girl growing up in Iran, how she --
her family is part of the Persian culture.
There's, you know, against the Islamist -- there's the you know,
the social you know, conflicts that come in their own, you don't need
to break free of that and to make her own life.
And obviously, by the time this book is published,
I do feel the social climate post 9/11 really made a lot of interest
in this book but it continues to be very popular to this day.
If you look at the bestseller list anytime, you will see five
of these seven books on it at any given time, any given week.
Fun Home, another memoir by Alicia Bechdel, it's interesting
that the three books by women on this list, Persepolis, Fun Home
and Smile are all actually autobiographies.
The others are by men are all fantasies
so I don't know what that tells you.
But these books all very popular
from the minute they were published, still read today.
So that's why I kind of want to say there's more and if any
of you are comics aficionados, you were thinking to yourself
on the last light but what?
How can she not mention Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes and Love
and Rockets, it's by the Hernandez Brothers.
All of them were guests here last year at SPX.
And I don't feel -- I feel Building Stories was an amazing book
but it isn't quite -- it just came out last year
and I don't feel it's been as accepted into these seven books
and it's always on the bestseller list.
And the same thing with Daniel Clowes and the Hernandez brothers.
I feel like their books are amazing but they haven't quite had the --
not the awareness that the previous seven were but of course,
they're amazingly brilliant books.
But in the comics field, I think they're very well-known
which is why I'm not talking about them today.
So what am I talking about?
I don't know.
What am I talking about?
This is a book that came out.
These are some books.
I'm just going to run through a couple that were --
came out during that same kind of Watchmen, Dark Knight period
and people were really like, "Wow!
You've got to read this.
Like this is a real graphic novel."
And they had some of the qualities I was talking about earlier in terms
of the complexity and the character development.
So Violent Cases by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean.
Now, Neil Gaiman, of course, we know
and this is actually his first well-known work.
This was what got people's attention
and said this Gaiman guy is somebody we should pay attention to
and it got him his gig writing Sandman
and you know, the rest is history.
Now, he's a Newbery Award winning author.
This book, you could see on the right there, is drawn by McKean
and the main character looks a lot like Neil Gaiman.
It's about a young boy growing up --
well, it's about a man remembering being a boy growing up in Port Smith
in England who has to go see an osteopath which is a bone doctor
because he's broken a bone.
And the osteopath once worked for Al Capone.
So it's just like this kind of oddball little incident but Gaiman
and his artistry kind of creates this whole symphony of memory
and childhood and well you know,
what is truth and what do we remember?
And McKean with his kind
of collage-type art is very uniquely suited to execute this.
But just kind of, some of the books I'm talking about,
we keep coming back to and this theme Neil Gaiman has come back
to several times and oops, what are we doing here?
Okay, yes.
So with -- he came back to it again just like a few years later
with Mr. Punch which is again about a man looking back at his youth,
this time, through the lens of a puppet show, the Punch
and Judy show, and again illustrated by McKean.
It was kind of a more fleshed-out version, I guess,
of some of the themes from Violent Cases.
And yet, I don't think anybody -- I don't know.
Has anybody or Mr. Punch found, has anybody ever -- okay, all right.
Yeah, right?
Yeah. So it's not.
I think people kind of like Violent Cases more because it has --
it's a little bit more authentic, I think.
It was a little bit more real.
Of course, Gaiman has returned to the same theme of his novel
that just came out this year, The Ocean at the End of the Lane,
once again about a man remembering a boy growing up in Port Smith
but I think this is probably his best realized version of this theme.
Anyway, when Violent Cases came out,
it not only put Neil Gaiman's name on the scene but it also --
it's about 64 pages, I guess and it was a very concentrated narrative
and it definitely impressed a lot of people with the graphic novel.
Now, another book that came
out around the same time was Fires by Lorenzo Mattotti.
Now of all the books I mentioned, this is the one that's not in print.
So if there are any publishers out there who would
like to bring this book back into print in English,
I know Mattotti would love it.
So just, you know, plant the seed.
Mattotti is an Italian artist.
He's more influenced by the European style of art.
So this is a story about a sailor named Absinthe who's on a battleship
and they discover this island where the natives are in -- have this --
exert this strange influence over Absinthe.
So it's kind of an explication of the nature versus civilization theme
that we see in a lot of books.
Well, a lot of times, this -- Melville, of course,
had a lot of this in his early works too
where the sailor discovers this primitive culture
and is changed by it.
What was really great about Fires is
that Mattotti is such an amazing artist.
I tried to scan in some of the pages and because it's not a lot
and they're very bad scans so I really apologize for them.
But you know, his expression is very influenced
by the [inaudible], by print makers.
He uses color throughout the whole graphic novel to show the sailor
and the natives like it's always used whenever a color is used.
It, you know, heightens the emotional impact of it and really,
this is one of the most beautiful graphic novels of all times.
So I don't know.
I'm always like, who has read this book?
Has anybody here read this?
So okay, two -- two people have read it, all right.
Oh well, it's not in print so you're not going to have an easy time.
But you can go on Amazon but what was great about it is again,
it was this really concentrated story line
that was totally committed to
and really the theme was played out so well.
And at the end, Absinthe must choose between fire of the natives
on the island or the fire of the ship where they're going
to bombard the island so to bring it into line with civilization.
So he has to choose between these two -- these two elements.
Again, just to talk a little bit
about influence of these kind of books.
Even though it's not in English, I mean,
it is well known in European comics.
So another book that's quite like that is The Speed Abater
by Christophe Blain, published by NBM which is also about a sailor.
These two sailors are down in the depths of a ship and finding evil
down like it's a huge world ship and they find down the engine room
where they work like things are not as they should be.
I actually really love this book.
It's pretty obscure but I love graphic novels of the sea.
I just put this slide in here just to show,
I think that we talk a lot about...
>> I think you can go back.
>> Oh, there we go.
Yes, thank you.
We talk a lot about superheroes and you know, the autobiography
and everything but I think it's fascinating to look at comics
and how there really are some sub-genres and there's a lot
of cartoonists who love these tales of the -- of adventure and the sea.
So you know, I would create a boys and girls own adventure line
of graphic novels some time, I think.
Now here's a guest.
He's actually here at SPX this weekend.
Part of the whole movement published by Fantagraphics in the 80's
and 90's were Dan Clowes, Peter [inaudible] --
the Hernandez brothers, later Chris Ware, but Peter Bagge was in there.
And you know, he's kind of getting his new book is out now
which is a biography of Margaret Sanger, the birth control expert.
But The Bradleys is another book that's not in print but all
of Peter Bagge's material is in print.
And what I loved about his stuff which was published
in two periodicals, one called Hate
and one was called Neat Stuff.
Just the passion of them.
And The Bradleys that in the late 80's,
there was all this dysfunctional families.
I mean The Simpsons and you know, Married with Children,
I mean it was the time we turned against like the happy family
of the old sitcoms, you know, Happy Days and really went
into how horrible and crappy families could really be.
And I think Neat Stuff was really The Bradleys with this family
in New Jersey, where I grew up, so I had a lot of empathy with it.
But you know, Buddy, Butch and Babs Bradley are the kids
and their parents, and they're all just horrible.
I mean, this is a -- they're just horrible people.
But yet, they're horrible people presented with amazing sympathy
like you never hate anyone even though the book was called Hate.
You just never hated anyone
because it think Bagge's really wonderful quality was
that he could do this manic cartooning
and just really over-the-top stuff but you never lost sight
of the real motivations of the characters.
This is a page from a story called Buddy,
The Weasel where he's just being such a horrible shit to his family.
I probably shouldn't have said that.
but -- and the last panel it's like, he's left his little brother
at the park and his mom's like, "Get in!
Where is Butch?"
He says, "Butch?
Good grief!
I forgot all about that little pest!"
And you could see he's genuinely --
he's worried for himself but he does --
deep down, he does care about Butch.
And at the end of the story, Buddy finds him sleeping on Hobo Beach.
You know, he's so alienated from his family that he thinks it's better
to go sleep at a contaminated beach than stay with them anymore.
And I love the stories and the Buddy Bradley saga.
Later on, he moved to Seattle and he had a series
of dysfunctional grunge girlfriends.
Then eventually he has to move back in with his parents and this is,
I guess I was cheating a little bit with this
because it's not really graphic novel but when you read the stories,
they're so dense in their incident and their plotting.
And the characters develop so much over the series of the book
that it really does have that quality
that I was talking about earlier.
Let's see, what do we have next?
Okay, Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker.
Now, how many people have read this?
Has anybody?
Okay, just a couple of our [inaudible].
So all right, so most of you, this book is another kind of time capsule
that came out in the late 90's or the early 90's, excuse me.
And this is really about what it was like to date in New York City
and living in the early 90's.
And it's about two women, Anne and her sister.
You could see Anne as the one who's cringing in the front
and her sister is the one who's arriving in a costume in the back.
And basically Anne has this --
you know, she's a writer and she's missing her deadlines.
She's drinking too much and then the other wacky sister
in a costume shows up and things really get hilarious.
This is a book of dialogue and social comedy.
Kyle Baker is the author of -- I mean, he just listened to people
and he just wrote down the hilarious things they said.
There's a whole section of this book that talks
about why you can't drink unless you have a driver's license and
yet the reason why you must show your driver's license is
so you won't drink too much to drive.
So you could only get a drink -- anyway, if you get where I'm going
with this, it's like why do you show the driving to be able to drink
when you can't drink and drive?
So anyway, one of the many incredible moments
in Why I Hate Saturn which is it still stands up.
There's another book by Kyle Baker called The Cowboy Wally Show
which is equally hilarious.
It's about a comic who's putting on a version of Hamlet
that isn't quite like Hamlet.
When this book came out, it was another one
where people were like, "Wow!
You can do a whole big thick book of social comedy that doesn't have,"
well, yeah, her sister did dress up in a costume
but it has nothing to do with super heroes.
It's completely set in the real world.
There's nothing incredible until the ending which a lot
of people gave Baker a lot of complaints about.
But it's completely real like if you don't see somebody that you know
in this book, you need to know more people [laughter].
But anyway, it's just a great comedy to me.
Let's see.
Now this book, okay now this is a book.
All right, who's -- anybody read Hicksville?
Anybody? Okay, let's see now like again, the three.
I see Chris Spitzer here.
You've read your classics.
You're well versed.
Now, Hicksville's a book probably very few people outside
of the comic book world have heard of which is a shame
because I think it's the book that's most beloved
of comics people and publishers.
It's very near and dear to their hearts because it's about a writer
who goes to this town called Hicksville
where comics are worshipped as the greatest art form that ever was.
And cartoonists are like Justin Bieber.
They are held in the highest renown and their deeds are gossiped about
and you know, the greatest celebrities of this town Hicksville.
So it sounds kind of like this gimmicky story
but it's really universal.
I mean, it's about mysteries and secrets which are my two favorites.
If a writer ever comes to me and said, "Yeah,
I got a story about a mystery."
I'm there.
I want to know or I don't even need
to know what the mystery is before I want to solve it.
But the writer goes to the island, the town of Hicksville and tries
to find Dick Burger, the world's most famous cartoonist
and things don't go so well.
Another thing I love about Hicksville is that it goes
to multiple levels like some of it is the comics that they're talking
about in there and then it goes back to the world
where he's walking around.
And it really handles all those levels with each of them.
It talks a lot about New Zealand history.
Horrocks is from New Zealand
and it really brings all those things together.
I mean, it's also got a lighthouse so it's got the sea in it
which I seem to be obsessed with.
And it's just beautifully drawn and really, the characters are just so,
so lovingly sketched and the story is great.
Another thing that Dylan does is he uses the imagery over again
like the continuing image of the woman driving a car
like every time it means something different.
Every time you see this image in the book,
like it's a different reason for it.
So I love the book Hicksville so much and it's so beautifully written
and it really talks a lot about comics.
It comes up from Drawn and Quarterly.
It's still available and I think this is what it came out again.
It influenced a lot of cartoonists.
This came out -- when did I say it came out?
1998, this book debuted at Small Press Expo
which is going to be going on tomorrow.
And I think it was one of the first books that came out at SPX
that really became a buzz book and really like created --
everybody was like, "Wow, I want to do this.
I want to make my own Hicksville.
I want to have a story that hangs together this well."
So I think it's very -- even though it's very little known among the
non-comics reading public, I think it's very influential actually,
much loved, certainly among cartoonists,
a much loved book and much quoted as well.
I think this [inaudible].
This is also another kind of SPX book published
by our comics expert here in the audience.
But this was a slim volume.
It's not really a novel.
It was more like a short story about a man who goes
to visit his wife's grave and her ghost comes
out of the grave and they go back.
And it's very elegiac.
But it was such a beautiful package.
It was a small book beautifully printed
and by a guy named Jordan Crane who came
out of a printmaking background, a very fine artist.
This isn't really a novel but I threw it in here because I think
when -- this is a book that people again were like, "I want to do that.
I want to put out a beautiful little book like this."
So okay, this book is probably the most obscure.
Has anyone read Bookhunter?
Raz, all right.
We have a couple of our comics experts who have read this
because I'm at the Library of Congress.
This is the greatest action movie ever set at a library [laughter].
And it is true.
It is true.
This is -- it's based on a real story.
It's by a guy named Jason Shiga.
He's a mathematician, kind of eccentric cartoonist.
He lives in the West Coast and his books are all very about the format
and mysteries but the mysteries are very contextual in the work.
So Bookhunter is based on a real story about a rare book
that was stolen from the Oakland Public Library in 1973.
And the crack team of library detectives get
on the case to solve this.
And so, it has this topic of finding the book and
yet it uses all the cliches of detective TV shows,
you know like, "All right, guys.
Listen up.
It was about five months ago that all eight copies of The China Lobby
in America were stolen from OPL.
As we got replacements, they were stolen as well.
We finally had our press men print up a couple
of copies using our radioactive dye.
That led us here."
And the whole book is like this police procedural
where they're using library stamps, glue and card catalogues so yes,
if you have not, you must get a copy of this.
It's hilarious.
This is -- this would also make a great action movie.
I mean, seriously.
I wish if I were going to make a comic movie, I would make it based
on Bookhunter even though the art is kind
of rudimentary but it doesn't matter.
And that's one of the things about graphic novels as well that's
so amazing is that the art style could be incredible, complex,
so beautiful, realistic or it could be very simple
as Jason Chiga's work is.
But it still tells us the story and it still gives you that sense
of fulfillment as you follow along with them.
Shiga has actually created another book.
I don't have a slide.
I probably should have put it in but it's called Meanwhile
which is a choose your own adventure book but it's about a kid
who wants an ice cream cone.
He says, "Do you want vanilla or chocolate?"
And depending on how you answer that, you follow its color code.
The whole book has tabs.
As you open it, you go back and forth.
There's something like over 100,000 different ways you can read this
book and that book is pretty well known.
So let's see, okay.
Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds.
Has anybody read this book?
Has anybody?
Ah! You see, [inaudible].
There's one, one yes, oh well one.
Okay, Posy Simmonds is an English cartoonist.
She's well known there.
Her comics appeared in The Guardian and they were serialized.
So she would do one page in the newspaper all --
each week, there would be one page.
And they're pretty long and complex.
These are very well written.
I would say, this is probably the first book I talked about on this,
well maybe Peter Bagge's work,
but really the language is just as important as the art.
Although the art is the life [inaudible],
you can see the characters are wonderful
but there is a lot of dialogue.
Now, she bases her work on classic novels
so just Gemma Bovery is based on Madam Bovary by Flaubert but it's
about a kind of upwardly mobile Englishwoman who goes
to the French countryside and thinks she's going to be all that.
And you know, for a while she is but then things go terribly wrong.
But accompanied by arch dialogue and you now, drinking a lot of wine,
so -- and baguettes, of course.
The baguette becomes a symbol of many things in this book.
But for those who love, you know, Downton Abbey or anything
like this, I would definitely recommend Posy Simmonds.
Her other book was Tomorrow Drew which is based on Far
From the Maddening Crowd by Thomas Hardy and that was made into a movie
that came out a couple of years ago in England.
But I wish she was better known here because her books are again,
have a real literary quality to them.
The writing is amazing.
They're very fulfilling and you know, very well thought out.
The characters are so well drawn.
I mean, they're just A plus and you know,
I'm sorry that she's not better known here
but her books are available.
So let's see.
Okay, probably my favorite contemporary cartoonist novelist,
cartoon novelist is Jason, a Norwegian cartoonist
who is, anybody read this book?
Anyone? Yes, okay, all right.
I Killed Adolf Hitler is about --
well, Jason works with this anthropomorphic style.
He kind of based it a little bit on the Disney stuff I was talking
about a long time ago, mixed with a little Tintin.
It's about a hitman who is hired to go back
in time using a time machine and kill Adolf Hitler.
Awesome, it sounds great.
But then, Hitler gets into the time machine [laughter]
and things don't go so well.
But this is -- the thing I love about Jason is
that his books are very compact.
They just -- the stories unfold bam, bam, bam,
bam like one -- each panel advances it.
He doesn't have time for, you know, messing around.
So even though there's a lot of action scenes
in here, it's very compact.
You know, along the way, he meets this woman and she is --
he is hired to kill her but he can't do it.
But she comes back into the time and this story goes back and forth
through time into the time machine and has the last page,
it's probably my favorite last page ever in a graphic novel
where just the regrets that they both have of this time machine
and how they used it and why their relationship worked
or didn't work during this whole caper
to kill Hitler, it's devastating.
The other thing I love about Jason is that he has this kind
of adventurous stories but it's always about --
there's always this personal -- it's usually romance.
It's usually a doomed romance.
I guess I love doomed romance so any novel that's about doomed romance,
I will be into and Jason certainly fits the bill.
Let me see.
I haven't talked at all
about mainstream comics and mainstream work.
And only two that I've even mentioned are --
have a writer and an artist.
The first was Watchmen, of course.
And then I mentioned the Neil Gaiman book and here's another one.
And why haven't I mentioned a lot of these books?
Because I feel that the writer/artist system isn't
as conducive to creating great works.
I just feel that's much more difficult using the civilization
method and also a lot of graphic novels
that you see now are collections of comics that have come out
and there's editorial dictates and it's not as personal a medium.
But I do feel that this book is great because Morrison
and Quitely really connected.
They really knew -- Morrison as a writer,
a Scottish writer has written Superman, Batman,
and many books, Vertigo, Invisibles.
He's kind of a guru.
A lot of his stuff is about altered states and about secret cabals
and conspiracies, that kind of stuff.
But in this book, it's about a kitty, a puppy, and a bunny.
And they are cybernetically enhanced and they try to escape.
So already we have a potential Old Yeller situation coming at us
and so there is some heartbreak involvement in this graphic novel.
I will not lie.
When you have three little animals in jeopardy, it's kind of based
on an Incredible Journey too which is, you know,
the animals try to get home.
What makes this book great is the art.
I mean, I mentioned a little while ago with Jason Shiga
that it doesn't have to be great art but you know what?
When it's great art, it's pretty great.
So you know, there's obviously some violence is happening but the way
that Quitely depicts these animals, you see they can talk.
They have limited brain power and we kind of hear their thoughts.
You know, it's very poignant because they're saying, "Run,"
I mean which is what the animals think.
Morrison, the author, is a great animal lover and animal activist.
And he really wrote this book to protest, you know,
experimentation on animals.
And it's a very powerful, powerful work that there are some images
in here that are pretty, pretty searing.
Let's put it that way.
And yeah, you can't go wrong with a kitty, a puppy, and a bunny.
Another book, do you know this book is very well known actually.
Has anybody read The Arrival?
Anyone? Okay, yeah a few.
It's interesting what people are [inaudible] with.
Shaun Tan is pretty well known.
I mean, he's won an Oscar so I would say this book is very well known
but the reason I put it on here is it's not really often considered a
graphic novel.
I mean, it's not really often spoken
of in the graphic novel sphere but it really is.
Even though there's no words in it whatsoever and this is another one
where the images really tell the story.
I mean, Tan is an amazing animator.
He's from Australia.
He is, you know, specializes
in these incredible imaginative creatures
and The Arrival is about immigration.
He based it on the Australian immigration experience
but when you look at -- you know, when I read the book,
I thought it was about New York.
It wasn't until I looked at the author flap and saw that he was
from Australia that I was like, "Oh, wow!
It's so universal."
He makes it completely universal through not having any words
in it and just the imagery.
So this is definitely a book, I think.
I think now I'm in the kind of the modern era of books that are --
graphic novels are pretty well established now so these aren't
as groundbreaking, I'd say.
But I mean, The Arrival is pretty incredible
and I've seen quite a few books that are trying to be
like The Arrival recently.
I just want to finish up with a couple of books
that are new this year, just to kind of see where we come.
The Property by Rutu Modan, I could not love this book anymore.
Rutu Modan is an Israeli cartoonist.
She has done two books, the other one was called Exit Wounds.
This is about a woman coming back to Poland with her granddaughter
where her family had property.
And they kept it during World War II and she's come back
with her granddaughter to see what's become of the property
and secretly find out what's happened to some of the people,
so find out what's happened to her past.
And what I love about this book is that it does the [inaudible] scenes
of the Holocaust but it's not so -- such obvious about it, I guess.
It deals with a lot more and I love the way Rutu treats the grandmother.
She's this really crafty character.
I mean, she's a lot like, you know,
sometimes you say you can't get anything past your grandma
and like the granddaughter does not know
that her grandmother has this secret agenda.
And the grandmother is sneaking
around to go see people and do things.
And you know, here she's looking at the window and seeing that the --
seeing, you know, how it used to be and imagining how it used to be.
So I mean, it has the poignancy again
between the past and the present.
And it is a really amazing book
that I think Modan is really the closest thing we have right now
to a novelist in comics in that the themes are so well played out,
the characters are so -- everything fits together.
By the end, you see exactly how it happened and everything
that was laid out; the questions are answered in a really beautiful way.
And finally, I'll end -- this is another book that just came out.
It's available at the show and the cartoonist will be
at the show as well, Rutu Modan.
Today is the Last Day of the Rest
of Your Life and this is not a novel.
But it's actually her memoir of being a punk teenager in Germany
or Austria actually, in the 80's, the early 80's.
And then just deciding with no money whatsoever to go to Italy
and with this crazy girl.
And you know, a lot of people have the crazy friend experience.
This is the ultimate crazy friend experience because as they go on,
I mean, I love the way she draws this
like they don't even have clothes to wear.
They have like nothing, you know.
So they want to go to the beach in Italy
so she tears off her t-shirt and makes a swimsuit.
"Wow, that looks great!
That works, doesn't it?
Sometimes, mom was right."
She's been talking about her mother who told her to be inventive.
But then she goes into the water and has to keep putting it on.
"The fabric sucks up water and gets super heavy.
I should have realized, you can't make a swimsuit out of a t-shirt."
So they've learned many lessons, many far worse
than that along those lines and it's pretty brutal and you know,
to know that it really happened is pretty stunning.
But I loved the way she captures it all.
And you know, at the end, what have we learned?
Again, you know, when you see the themes, the story, this is real life
but she shaped her own experiences into something
that has that journey to that.
That doesn't just go from point A to B. It has
so many complexities along the way and when she comes back,
it was a tough journey but really a great example
of taking your true life and really shaping it into a narrative that's
about all the stupid things we do when we're a kid.
So yeah, there's a lot of graphic novels out there.
These are just a few of the ones that I really like
and I would urge you to explore.
I have mentioned so many books that anything that you have not --
you know, I have mentioned here that you'd like to know more about,
I'd be happy to answer questions.
If you're around for Small Press Expo,
they'll be selling tons of these books there.
But there's something for everybody.
There's all kinds of stories and I think that's the beauty of it.
And I think -- I just look forward to it.
I mean, this is just some ideas I threw together about it.
But I really look forward to exploring more and kind
of seeing the development of them
and seeing those hidden threads of the graphic novel.
So thank you.
[ Applause ]
And anybody have any questions out there?
I guess I answer it all.
>> You might have.
>> [Laughter].
>> Yes.
>> Well, I [inaudible] of things you left out.
>> I know.
I knew what the danger, yes.
>> Well, what about Jimmy Corrigan?
>> Well, I said that.
He's asking, "What about Jimmy Corrigan?"
I agree but I said that book is very well known and that's why I want
to talk about books that weren't as well known.
So I mean, I could -- obviously didn't talk
about -- that's very important.
I agree. So I mean, I left out Seth.
I left out Joe Sacco.
I left out Julie Doucet.
I left out tons of [inaudible]
but then we'd be here all day and nobody wants that.
>> Well, just a quick comment [inaudible].
As a librarian, the term graphic novel is kind of a [inaudible]
because a bunch of this is factual and real-life experiences
so you know, when the term novel enters into it,
it's like it gets confusing.
>> Right. Well that's something people have argued about all along.
People -- he asks, he says the graphic novel is not --
they're not novels.
In fact, that last book I showed wasn't a novel.
It was an autobiography and yeah.
Well, we've gone back and forth about that.
Some people want to call it graphic fiction
as opposed to graphic nonfiction.
You know, unfortunately, when a term catches on, it catches on.
I mean, I was talking about superhero books
that are called graphic novels but they're not.
They're collections and anthologies really.
So I agree.
I think people are trying to -- I think as things get better known,
I think people are trying to use the graphic fiction, graphic nonfiction.
I know for journalism, people are trying
to call it graphic nonfiction.
So I don't know.
I don't know if it will catch on.
So yeah. Yes?
>> When would you consider a collection a comic
that is each unit is a chapter in the whole thing and then
when you put it together, you got the whole bunch.
Because Dickens came up that way.
>> Right.
>> And it was a novel.
>> Right.
>> It's not considered anything when it is a complete story,
not just episodes, it is a novel.
>> Yeah, right.
>> It just came out in separate pieces.
>> Right, absolutely.
And I think when you say that the novel is --
even though it's serialized as Dickens' books were,
that it creates a novel and a lot of the books
that I just talked about were serialized.
You now, WE3 came out in three separate issues
but it was planned as a whole story.
You know, Bone, I mentioned on there.
That came out over a period of 13 years, right?
And you know, I mean a lot goes on in 13 years
but there's an ongoing thread.
So I think one of the things about -- sometimes a serialized comics,
I think, are very disappointing in that way.
And I think -- but I think it can be really great.
I think that's the art, you know.
I mean, one of the things I love about Rutu Modan's work is
that she didn't do it as a graphic novel.
It came out in one piece and Bookhunter is another book
that came out in one piece.
Fires, Violent Cases, I mean, there's a few books
on there that came out in one go.
But a lot of them were serialized.
Hicksville was serialized.
You know, obviously, Watchmen was serialized.
Jimmy Corrigan was serialized first.
So it certainly, you can, can be great.
I have a personal love of people who could just sit down for five years
and put out a 400-page graphic novel, you know,
or 10 years or whatever it was.
I'm very impressed by that and you know.
But it's not the only way.
And certainly economically, it's very difficult.
I mean, yes?
>> Do you think there'd be a movie of Y: The Last Man?
I think I read something about that.
>> They have been talking about that for a long time.
And I don't know.
To my taste, it's a little bit like the Walking Dead.
It's kind of this post-apocalyptic story.
She asked what happened to the Y: The Last Man movie.
So I don't know.
They keep talking about it.
I mean, I think as Brian Vaughan becomes more well-known
and the author becomes more well-known,
maybe it'll always be revisited.
I think it would be really hard to do as a movie.
I don't know how you'd do the themes
because it really is about the development.
It's about, oh my God, what are we going to do now?
And the Walking Dead is kind of like, "Oh my God,
what are we going to do now?"
So I think it's a lot like that so I think it might have a hard time now.
>> Thanks a lot.
>> Anyone else?
So all right.
>> What was the name of the Adolf Hitler one?
>> Of the what?
>> The Adolf Hitler one.
>> Adolf Hitler, oh I Killed Adolf Hitler.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah by Jason.
So, anyway.
All right.
Well, thank you so much for listening to me babble on.
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.