Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Harvey Pekar, R.I.P.

Seminal comics author Harvey Pekar died yesterday at his home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Pekar's long-running American Splendor chronicled his own life, and told stories about his neighbors, friends, and community. His starkly autobiographical work has influenced countless comics creators and drawn in a wide variety of readers, and today comics luminaries and lovers around the web are posting remembrances of Pekar and praise for his contributions to literature, comics, and the American cultural landscape.

For those of you who'd like to take this opportunity to revisit Pekar's work, and those who haven't read him but want to make up for that right away, I suggest you might start where I did, with his collaboration with his wife Joyce Brabner, Our Cancer Year. Brabner and Pekar open their home and their marriage to readers in this story of the year in which Pekar was diagnosed with and underwent treatment for lymphoma, while they also bought a house together and moved out of the apartment Pekar had lived in for decades. It's tense, complicated, sweet, funny, painful, and a great read.

Undoubtedly as more folks hear of Pekar's death, the hold lists on his books, and on the 2003 film based on his life, will only get longer and longer. If you want to expand your comics reading in a Harvey Pekar-ish direction without having to wait in line, you might try one of these suggestions:

Clutch McBastard's life is laid bare to the world in his autobiographical comic Clutch – each page has four frames of simple, line-drawn comics illustrating the events of a single day. The economy of expression that this format demands, combined with the comic's very everyday subject matter, makes it something of a pleasant surprise that Clutch's relatively average, largely depressing life makes for such a pleasant, compelling story. (Pictured at right, Clutch 19: The Lost Years.)

Kelly Froh is the author of many short, eloquent comics which illustrate her rich observations on the mundane elements of life. One brilliant example is Debbie's Story, a biography of Froh's aunt Debbie, who was briefly rebellious in her youth, but who eventually moved in with her parents and (apparently) settled for a life of mediocrity.

Joe Sacco's comics chronicle his life, for sure, but he writes more as a journalist than a memoirist. Sacco's reports of his travels to the thick of the Bosnian War and the Palestinian Conflict, in particular, are wry observations on the complex realities of violence, scarcity and social division; but along the way he also shines a light on the amazing capacity people have for warmth, fellowship, and even hope.  (Pictured at right, The Fixer.)

And in the world of comics fiction, I can highly recommend Daniel Clowes's Ghost World, the story of two disaffected smarter-than-thou teenage girls living in a depressingly cookie-cutter American suburb. The two friends criticize pop culture as they try to avoid looking forward to adulthood.  Ghost World is definitely a downer, but with its angst comes a certain welcome poignancy.

Creating Community at the Library

You may think this is obvious for all library employees, but I have always been a Library Person. It's not necessarily true of everyone who works in a library, but I had a connection to my hometown library as far back as I can remember and I was always pestering my librarians for good reads. I participated in Summer Reading, went to storytimes, and visited the library for any special events. As I got older, I went to study with friends (and was shushed my fair share of times), to learn new skills, and to meet my neighbors. When I started working at the Central Library ten years ago, I was awed by the number and variety of people who streamed through its doors every day. Now, as those numbers continue to climb and I work in all the neighborhood branches, I vividly see the impact that each library has on the community it serves. David Sarasohn recently highlighted the growing numbers of people turning to the library for materials and connection during this recession. A library is certainly an essential part of a vibrant community, but the people who come to the library every day are essential to creating vibrant libraries.

In a nod to the central place that many libraries occupy in their communities, Heart of the Community: The Libraries We Love: Treasured Libraries of the United States and Canada, Karen Christensen and David Levinson have created a tribute to beloved libraries across the continent. They compile just the basic information and history of each library and may also include some details about what makes each library special. To create this book, the authors actually winnowed a list of 300 nominations with the help of an advisory board packed with authors, library lovers, and other literary types. You could use this book and browse the beautiful pictures to create your own list of libraries to visit.

I don't know if Don Borchert would have considered himself a Library Person before landing his job in the Los Angeles Public Library system. He had worked in advertising, as a short-order cook, and as a door-to-door salesman, among other things, when he began his career at the library. In Borchert's story, the library is an essential part of the community, but a part that most who breeze in and out to pick up holds could easily miss. His book, written after over ten years on the trenches, is Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks and Gangstas in the Public Library and it certainly doesn't wrap the world of the library in a misty veil of brotherly love and the righteous pursuit of knowledge. Rather, he recounts stories of moms in fistfights, unruly teens, and drug dealers in the bathrooms. Throw in a pinch of the awkwardness of civil service and mix it all up with a genuine appreciation for the wonderful and strange things that happen in the public library and you'll have an idea of the tone of his book. Oh, and nothing like the events he recounts would ever happen here. Never.

I almost feel like I'm revealing an industry secret by sharing the web comic strip series Unshelved by ex-librarian Bill Barnes and his illustrator Gene Ambaum. For every "problem" encountered in the library, Barnes has created an apt three panel zinger to illustrate it. If you want in on the secret of what gets us giggling, try their latest, Frequently Asked Questions: an Unshelved Collection, though I can't guarantee that the humor translates perfectly to anyone not employed in a library. The strip centers on the character of Dewey, a slacker Teen Librarian (he's a librarian for teens, not a necessarily a teen himself), and his colleagues, manager and the regulars at a small library branch in Mallville, USA. This pair will be in town later this week for the biggest annual event for public libraries, taking place this year in Portland, the Public Library Association Conference. Their booth, 916, will be mobbed by librarians eager to buy merch and get comics signed.

A Good Investment After All

I heard on the radio the other morning that Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment, home of comics heroes Spider-Man, the X-men, and Iron Man, for the stunning price of $4 billion dollars. That could buy a lot of plastic sleeves to protect those comics! With the trend of movies being made from comics, it makes sense for Disney to own the content that it could use to make new movies, and then fill time slots on its television channels, and make all-new action figure lines, and then paste superheroes onto lunch boxes and pencils and notepads and folders and everything else you can paste a superhero onto. It looks like a savvy purchase, even though Disney's stock went down after the news broke. I just love to see comics discussed as news.

When you're ready to investigate the creative well that the world's largest entertainment company will now be drawing from, you could pick up The Marvel Comics Encyclopedia : a Complete Guide to the Characters of the Marvel Universe. Published by DK Publishing, the source of myriad exhaustive guides to everything from Spiderman to Horses, Spain to Hockey. The Encyclopedia combines an A-Z list of characters with essays about Marvel comics through the decades. For advanced study, you should definitely take a look at the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Multiple volumes, thousands of characters, alternate worlds and all the information you need to really geek out.

Oh, Scott McCloud, I have totally fallen for your bespectacled alter-ego in Understanding Comics: the Invisible Art. You lead me, Virgil-like, through the concentric circles of meaning in the comics world. Okay, I may be overstating it a teensy bit, but I do think this book is swoon-worthy, if only for the fact that it makes something invisible and ephemeral into something concrete and understandable. McCloud explains how all the elements of comics come together to create meaning. And he manages to do it without making it clinical or killing the beauty of comics art.

I have to admit that I am not really a superhero comics fan. Many friends over the years have tried to help me see the error of my ways and I have tried, really I have. What keeps me reading comics are stories about people's lives, whether they are autobiographical or use cartoon animals as stand-ins. Ivan Brunetti and I think along the same lines. He has collected a selection of the best contemporary "art comics" in An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories. Brunetti hasn't just selected Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz Award winners, though they are represented in this two-volume anthology. A very personal selection of stories and excerpts, this book presents what he considers the best piece from each person, and unlike many comics anthologies, women artists and writers are fairly well represented.

The Library has a large collection of comics, including Marvel and other superhero comics, Manga, and a wide range of alternative and art comics for children through adults. For a short sampling of graphic novels, check out our Graphic Novels booklist in the Readers section of the Library's website.