Hi Dave,

I am looking for suggestions for graphic novels or comic that are either 1) science fiction or 2) contain science content in some other way (ie a prose example would be half brother by kenneth oppel) for an afterschool program I will be designing for 6th graders in DC. Any thoughts? I welcome all suggestions. Thanks!

I’m an old-school SF fan from back in the day but have found only a few high quality true sci fi comics over the years. I’m not sure why that is. Some part of the question revolves around what we call science fiction.

Broadly ‘Science Fiction’ may be any story with advanced technology, so stories set in modern times but with advanced gadgets and gewgaws may count. Even many superhero comics essentially fit under this category (Iron Man, for instance, though even Batman would qualify).

Classic old school 1950′s era Sci Fi acts as speculative fiction, identifying a trend or direction in science, then extrapolating that concept to an end. A ‘what if’ sort of story, where an author pre-imagines the future and our place in it.

Nowadays our ‘what if’ stories are commonly set in a near-future dystopia, with the authors extrapolation on grim social trends more than technology. This may be that as a culture we live in an era of science wonders, accepted as commonplace, and yet our social problems and environmental disasters remain durable and occasionally dire.

Further beyond this genre we have what we call Space Opera, sprawling epic tales set in a universe where space travel and alien species are commonplace. These sorts of stories are commonly a sort of Science Fantasy in a way, where advanced technology substitutes for magic.

Under those broad guidelines, here are a few middle school age books from our library’s collection that have a science fiction-y component:

Missile Mouse, by Jake Parker.
Interstellar James Bond mouse, saving the world against the forces of evil.   All ages, space opera.

Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius, Ultimate Collection, by Chris Eliopoulos
Mr Fantastic of the superhero team the Fantastic Four is the smartest man in the world. His son Franklin is an ordinary excitable kid, a genius only at getting into trouble. These stories follow his antics evading his robot nanny H.E.R.B.I.E. to explore the world using his father’s inventions. Mayhem ensues. Think ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ if Calvin had access to a mad scientists laboratory. All ages.

Mal and Chad: The Biggest Bestest Time Ever, by Stephen McCranie
Speaking of scientists… Mal is a seemingly ordinary elementary school student. ‘Seemingly’ because he works overtime to hide his brilliance. His bio-enhanced talking dog Chad, Jetpacks, shrinking machines — these are child’s play for him to whip together, however Mal realizes that if he were to reveal his true brainpower he would be promoted out of school — and lose the chance to see his one true love Megan. A dilemma arises when a classmate ‘discovers’ Mal’s greatest invention: a working time machine. All ages.

The Secret Science Alliance and the Case of the Copycat Crook, by Eleanor Davis
Reviewed previously:  http://comixtakoma.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/the-secret-science-alliance-and-the-copycat-crook/

Zita the Space Girl, by Ben Hatke:
Reviewed here:  http://comixtakoma.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/zita-the-space-girl-by-ben-hatke/

RUST: Visitor in the Field, by Royden Lepp, reviewed previously: http://comixtakoma.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/rust-visitor-in-the-field-by-royden-lepp-also-tidbits-from-the-nycc/

Meanwhile, by Jason Shiga:
A flowchart based comic, where the reader makes various choices to send the character down various (literally) twisting turning plotlines. Science laboratories, time machines and death ray devices are encountered along the way. All ages.

Atomic Robo (series) by Brian Clevenger
Genius Nikolai Tesla’s greatest invention, Atomic Robo is a living robot, a man made of metal, with all the emotions and thoughts of a human being, though effectively immortal if not indestructible. Stories show Robo during various eras: in World War Two chasing down the products of evil Nazi scientists, in the gangbusters eras as a pulp action hero, in modern times as a Government contractor running his team of Action Scientists. The book reeds as Hellboy without the Hell. These are fun slam bang action stories with a smattering of science here and there. Recommended for middle grades and up due to gunplay etc, though the humor etc keep the tone light.

Girl Genius (series) by Phil Foglio
Set in a Steampunk fantasy realm, these stories follow the odyssey of Agatha Clay, girl genius. Orphaned, her parents were great scientists, Agatha has a the knack to build functional machines of brilliant inspiration, however this knack was long suppressed due to a locket they left for her to wear. Apparently all great scientists are culled from society by a domineering overlord and his minions, so Agatha –whose family bloodline includes great inventors of folklore and mythology– needs must be hidden from their clutches or suffer the same fate of her long lost parents. For middle grades and up due to violence and unrealistically proportioned female characters.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, by Hiyao Miyazaki
Academy award-winning animation demigod Miyayaki tried his hand at a manga version before adapting this story to the moving picture screen. It works both ways.

This epic ecological parable follows the adventures of a messianic young girl living in a world destroyed by a cataclysmic failure of the ecosystem.  Her naturalist’s sense of wonder leads her deep into the spore forests that menace civilization.  More sketchy than Miyazaki’s crystal clear anime treatment of the same story, but here we see more in depth detail and characterization.   The anime and manga supplement each other well.

Neotopia (4 volumes), by Rod Espinosa
One of my favorite lesser-known graphic novel  works.  This is a Princess and the Pauper story:  the body-double for a slacking and imperious princess is thrust into a position of power and must make decisions to save her kingdom as though she were who she appears to be.

Beautiful neo-future steamtech envisioned here carries the characters in their sktyward journeys across a fantastical land.   Zeppelin armadas traverse the sky.  Mutant animals (dolphin navigators, man-bat pilots) ally with humans in their diplomatic missions.   Along the way the heroine falls in love with an earnest engineer who tries to refurbish the technology of the lost era.

Consider also  stories set in the Star Wars universe, published by Dark Horse comics. If you’re looking for all-ages versions of these stories look for books with the word ‘adventures’ in the title.   (Clone wars Adventures etc). These are more cartoony and iconographic, pocket manga sized books, and tend towards what would be rated ‘G’ more than PG-13 (if they were movies).

IDW Publishing has the rights to comics adaptations of the Star Trek, Transformers, and Doctor Who franchises.  They do a good job with each of them.  Star Trek especially hits high notes.
The following are some of my favorites in our collection that may or may not may be steep for 6th grade (due to language, violence or more mature themes) but shouldn’t be overlooked.  Pre-read these, then decide:

Creature Tech, by Doug TenNapel
Scientist Michael Ong works as an agent for a federal agency that investigates unexplained phenomena to find out what makes them tick, or to stop them from ticking by any means necessary.  The problems arise when a ghostly figure releases a rampaging slug beast from a container to act as cover for the theft of the Shroud of Turin.   The slug beast is defeated, but its vest was apparently an animate being, a symbiote that punches out agent Dr Ong’s heart then fixes itself to him, gifting him with a 2nd pair of arms, and a host of other abilities.

As with most of TenNapel’s book the plot involves romance, spirituality, philosophy, etc..  This one is well written and would be appropriate for middle grades except for the occasional panel of realistic gore and a cuss word or two.

Earthboy Jacobus, also by Doug TenNapel
Interdimensional space whale crashes into suburban neighborhood. Goons follow. Boy gets pulled into the other realm and becomes messiah-like figure. Dad follows to rescue him. Or vice versa (tangled plot). In our Young Adult section due to the aforementioned gore and an occasional off-color word.

Wake, by Jan Morvan.
Girl lives a Tarzan-like existence as the only living human on her jungle planet.   A passing Interstellar convoy claims the world for terraforming for a race who needs a high temperature environment, only then discovering there is at least one living sapient inhabitant.   She causes them no end of hassle as the leader of the terraforming tries to hide her existence from discovery, by assassination.   She proves remarkably slippery and kicks alien behind. Loses her world but is rescued by the convoy, becomes a secret agent for their operatives.

We have this in our Adult collection but only because in volume 1 the main character has censor bars instead of a shirt (it’s translated from French, who have less of a problem with that sort of thing). Succeeding volumes are exciting adventure stories appropriate for a Young Adult level (late middle grades and up).

Lone Wolf 2100 (series, 3 volumes) by Mike Kennedy and Francisco Ruiz Velasco
A small girl is the only known patient immune to a deadly plague, or perhaps she is a carrier for an even deadlier infection.  Corporations are seeking her for experimentation.   A noble samurai seeks to protect her from various predators while transporting her across a dangerous wasteland.  Said samurai is revealed to be a cyborg or android, though his programming may be malfunctioning in that his prime directive seems to be to keep the girl safe, overriding any orders from the corporation that built him.

On our Adult side due to realistic violence, language, mature themes, but a great action story if you don’t mind bleak-future dystopian tales.  The art is vivid clean and gritty all at once.

Orbital, by Serge Pelle and Sylvain Runberg
Cinebook translates many great comics from international publishers.   Like Wake,  Orbital is a great SF comic translated from French.  The story follows the admission of human beings into an interstellar organization whose job is to enforce the peace.  Humans are seen as a primitive, underdeveloped even brutish race.  A human Caleb, joins the peace-keepers and is paired with Mezoke, a woman of an alien species who have recently fought a conflict with humanity.

The art is detailed, complex and beautifully rendered. On our adult side for complexity of writing and interest level more than anything else.

You may also be interested in Brian Fies’ book Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? a graphic novel examining how yesterday’s ‘future’ has evaporated or changed.

“I didn’t come here to change my style.  I came here because I want to be happy again.”

The mostly true visual diary of the author (under the pseudonym ‘Stacy Black’) who finds herself in a psychiatric hospital following a self-destructive incident.  At seventeen, living with her boyfriend, separated from her family, graduated from high school, she loses touch with herself.  After punching out panes of glass, she asks her mother to commit her to a psychiatric hospital.

Once there she tries to maintain her sense of self while coming to grips with a numbing depression, her unhealthy relationship with her boyfriend, her difficult family dynamics.  

The art looks relatively primitive, but is quite clever in composition.  Simple skinny line drawings stage Stacy’s personal drama, while her captioned inner narration lends cynical commentary to the action (call it:  ‘Diary of an Angst-y Young Woman’).   Spare panels use white space to suggest a clinical atmosphere.   In a session of family therapy, angry dialogue between Stacy and her overbearing mother buries their counselor in word balloons.

The untrained art serves the story well, suggesting an emotional honesty and credibility.   None of the art would look out of place in the journal of a young woman.  There’s an immediacy of emotion, as the character only slowly admits to herself that she also has an eating disorder.   We find this out as she does.  Chapter breaks further reveal insights on Stacy’s character and personality via interview questions posed to her friends.

For the audience (especially for young women struggling with these issues) the book itself may serve as group therapy in the best way, where  recognition of shared experiences and feelings (and that these feelings may be widespread) serves to reduce a sense of isolation, validate your experience, and thus raise self-esteem.

At our library we keep this in the Young Adult section,  there is little in the way of objectionable language or visual content (one or two cuss words; flecks of vomit; we see a close up of cutting — all of which is rendered with a sense of emotional distance, not for shock effect) but the issues addressed are complex and emotional.

To my way of thinking the book would be appropriate for middle school readers (and up) as the kids most interested in the topic would be those who most need to read this sort of book.  Anyone for whom the issues are upsetting would be unlikely to check out or read the book in the first place.

The book is highly recommended for a high school level, though at our library the audience mostly eagerly waiting for it are all 6th-8th grade girls.

Many of the best comics produced today begin as webcomics.   The reason is simple, it costs little to nothing to post your content online seeking an audience, where back-in-the-day creators would self-publish only after maxing out credit cards for the initial print run, or going the ‘zine route and taking a job at a copy shop for the free print-outs.

Now the world is wide open, we’re in a renaissance for comics art as the technology provides both new tools for production and an instant outlet for an audience to find the work.

Granted the traditional publishing houses often overlook these series as they don’t fit the industry standards, however since the entire web-scape can track them down and lay eyeballs on the content, occasionally these books attract enough readers to encourage a real-world publisher to risk a print run.

(Better still, librarians who are searching for new books but want to get a preview may take a peek to see if the book fits their own standards).

Here are two in that category that I’d recommend you enjoy.

Gunnerkrigg Court by Thomas Siddell

British boarding school, students learning magic,  lost parents, hidden conspiracies, supernatural enemies — okay you may think you’ve heard this before, and you may be right.

But that’s not a bad thing.   One difficulty as a librarian lies in finding appropriate books to recommend to kids who loved the heck out of one book and who are seeking something new to grab their attention.   Gunnerkrigg Court (Archaia Studios Press) is happy to carry the torch where Harry Potter hands it off.

The story follows Antimony Carver, a first year student at the boarding school for which the series is named.  Her default setting is unfazed, but that never stunts her curiosity.  To the contrary her lack of fear and high tolerance for the eerie tend to spur her to discover trouble wherever it is lurking.  Naturally it lurks everywhere.

The school is peopled with animate shadows, defunct robots, possessed stuffed animals, erudite minotaurs– the usual lot.  Some of the story arc involves Miss Carter’s quest to learn more about her parents, who seem to have attended the school in long years past.  More than anything though in this first volume we get to watch over her shoulder as she pokes her nose into sections of the school where she doesn’t belong and find friends or make enemies of the inhabitants.  Readers will enjoy Antimony’s matter-of-fact bravery and general kindness in the face of adversity.

The art is stylized, iconographic, influenced perhaps by manga without borrowing directly from it.  Occasional renderings are awkward, but all the more charming for the occasionally primitive panel.  Mr Siddell improves as he works.

We keep this book in our all-ages collection, there’s no stark language, little violence and the cartoony rendering keeps it from being scary for little kids.  But the storylines will appeal to kids in the middle grades and up.

Celadore, by Canaan Grall

With similar themes (supernatural forces, tough and resourceful girl hero)  readers may also enjoy Austrailian (via Canada) artist Caanan Grall’s Celadore (DC Comics).

This comic was actually developed for DC Comics online experimental publishing/social media venture ZudaComics.com.  The site is now defunct, and the comics published may soon be out of print (though as of today Amazon still had copies available).  Too bad, the comic deserves a wide audience.

If you liked the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise you may well love Celadore.  Butt-kicking woman warrior Celadore is slain in the course of tracking down bloodsuckers, but rather than dissipate into the afterlife she somehow body-hops into the comatose body of 11 year old Evelyn Massey.  She rises to wreak vengeance, but the problem is Miss Massey isn’t quite done year with her body, and life, and the whole nine yards.

Evelyn’s displaced spirit follows Celadore in her body, as does her neighbor and would-be friend the pesty and apparently nigh-indestructable Sam who has an unquenchable crush for the unfortunate Evelyn (and by extension for Celadore, the current occupant).

Together the three team up to defeat a cabal of vampires who seek to enact rites that will allow vampires to walk around in daylight, among other nasty things.

Action is fast paced, characters well written.  Banter and running jokes keep dialogue snapping like firecrackers.   The story is enjoyably convoluted.  Art is clean-lined and precise with bright crisp colors, realistic settings and backgrounds even if the characters are more cartoony.

‘Realistic’ means that the occasional scenes of violence promote this to our Young Adult collection (vampires get impaled, big honking demon-things are studded with snapped bones poking through their muscles, etc) though the breezy tone keeps the ‘ick’ factor light.

A fun book for middle grades and up.  I’m looking forward to more work by this artist.

Underground, you can feel the weight of the cliff face overhead.  There is a solemn quiet in the tribe, even the bundled infants keep respectful silence.  All would be dark, but you have brought fire with you,  bundles of rivergrass twisted together burning brightly.  White Streak pours water on a pile of powders, dips his hand into the mud and strokes the wall, leaving a swatch of color.  He scratches with a burned stick, here and here.  Behold:  an animal,  then a herd, running, powerful.   Here a hunter carries a spear, here a spear has pierced the skin of a great longhorned bison that staggers and soon will die to feed the tribe.

Stories told in pictures have been with us for as long as we have recorded story in any durable form.  We are hardwired to understand images, and make stories in our heads to make sense of these images.  It is an important part of our mental heritage, and in fact one of the building blocks of ‘culture’ itself: the ability to pass on information via visual representations.

The truth is we understand that quite well.  I give my 1-yr-old daughter board books to chew on and we flip the pages while I point out that a cow says ‘moo’.   This is understood as a critical part of developing a capacity for conceptual thought in her wrinkly little brain.   I show her the image of an animal, describe its ways and actions.   She has no idea that this animal feeds her with milk and flesh, that its skin will cover her tiny pink feet.   But somehow it is important to know that there are cows in the world, and this is how they sound.  Even if she never has to hunt one to feed her family.  (I hope).

At some point though we decide that the stories we can tell are more nuanced  if we take away the pictures.  Kids graduate from books with vivid detailed images to chapter books with a few illustrative examples and then to thick tomes packed back-to-front with text.   There is a value judgment in that swap,  the belief that words are more mature or important than images.

But there is no real reason that this should be true.  Is an audiobook more refined and resonant than a foreign movie at the local arthouse cinema?    Is a poem more important than a painting?

poem and painting as one, Wm Blake's Tyger

But to my way of thinking it is a false dichotomy.    A picture is worth a thousand words, but the narrative density of a work that uses image and word to tell a story allows you at times to pack a great deal more substance into a single page.  There is a reason why a two hour film can be described in 20 pages of storyboard — for this is at heart what comic books are movies on the page.  The function of sequential art –that is, images placed in sequence to tell a story–  is a series of shorthand ways to illustrate sound, time, emotion and action.  In the absence of a shaman who can mimic the bellow of a bull bison struck by a spear, we have  captions, speed lines, sound effects.

Still there’s no question when comes to comics,  the flinch reaction for many is to dismiss the format itself as inherently juvenile and sub-par.   It’s interesting to know how that value judgement was formed.   Two hundred years worth of history lays the groundwork for this bias.

In the late 1800′s New York World publisher Joseph Pulitzer discovered that the more images he put in his newspapers, the more he’d sell.  With satirical editorial cartoons, he could encapsulate or lampoon an idea that might take a multi-column essay to explain otherwise, and even semi-literate readers, or new immigrants who primarily spoke other languages would still buy papers if the images helped to decode the news story, or otherwise entertain.

RF Outcalt’s slum-dwelling Yellow Kid  became the first recurring comic character, commenting on action via slogans written on his shirt, telling stories via panels written in sequence, essentially in comic strips.

The character and the format  became so popular that rival publisher William Randolph Hearst hired Outcalt away to illustrate for the New York Journal American, but the character continued to appear in the World.  Thus at one point both newspapers published Yellow Kid exploits.  They became known as ‘Yellow Kid’ newspapers, and the brand of  readership-at-all-costs sensationalist (even fictionalized) journalism they practiced became known as ‘Yellow’ journalism.

So at the inception of the artform comics were linked with a medium perceived as sub-literate, low-culture, associated with sensationalist even unethical practices, perhaps fit only for indiscriminate readers and immigrants.

Or perhaps not, when you consider the brilliance of draftsmen like Winsor McKay who seized the artform and expanded it’s possibilities:

Winsor McKay's mind-bendingly wonderful Little Nemo in Slumberland

Fast forward through the invention of the superhero in pulp action comics  in the early 20th century  (worthy of a post of their own, upcoming) and pause a moment in the 1950′s.

Comics traveled to the front lines with soldiers in World War Two, and soldiers returning from war continued to read them.  As reader’s grew up, the subject matter grew up as well, with stories touching on themes of horror, death, or romance and betrayal.

Psychiatrist Frederic Wertham discovered that many of the deeply disturbed kids he was working with in his clinic in Harlem were interested in these more mature comics.  Wertham made a causal link between these books and his patients disturbed state.  In his book The Seduction of the Innocent, Wertham made the case that kids are affected by the environment around them.    Since these kids were disturbed and they read these comics perhaps the comics contributed towards making them disturbed.

Perhaps–  though he neglected to consider other factors that contributed to the causes of their dysfunction.  He was treating children who had suffered significant trauma in their lives (rape, neglect and other abuse).  The literature they were reading was likely less of a contributing factor than the acts they had suffered.

In fact a case can be made that in reading books of this sort they were working out internal issues, seeking catharsis or resolution for their feelings.  This is one of the primary functions of art itself.

In Bruno Bettleheim’s the Uses of Enchantment he makes a similar case for the dark and gristly resolution of many folk tales and fairy tales.  The witch must be nailed into a barrel and rolled about the town for the child to feel that justice has been done.  Yes there is good and bad in the world, and evil must be punished.

Bettleheim’s argument goes that it is inherently satisfying to kids to learn this, since it gives them a place to put their own dark or complex or angry feelings.   Otherwise, if you give them only happy stories, they believe that they themselves  may be ugly or evil for having bad feelings.

Regardless Wertham’s case was so persuasive that Congress held hearings to protect America’s children from this sort of literature.  The comics publishers all agreed to censor themselves and adhere to a common code of morals, including such tenets as:

 Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.

If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.

In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.

Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism and werewolfism are prohibited.

Special precautions to avoid references to physical afflictions of deformities shall be taken.

Although slang and colloquialisms are acceptable, excessive use should be discouraged and wherever possible good grammar shall be employed.

  All characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society.

Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the problems of love is not a license for moral distortion.

The treatment of love-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage.

Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions.
strictly forbidden.

Fair enough.  However, what it meant was that only certain kinds of stories were allowed to be told in this artform.  And their audience was predetermined.

Because kids could and did read comics, and because comics can be instantly understood even by those who are under-literate, therefore only stories that are appropriate for little kids could be published in this format.

From then on American comics have generally been thought of as little kid stuff.  Quaintly juvenile.  Generally featuring the exploits of various superheroes, or occasionally, in the the hijinks of humor magazines, showing the wholesome romance of Archie and his pals, or the shennanigans of Richie Rich, Caspar the Friendly Ghost, and so on.

In the half century (and then some) since those hearings before congress, the artform has grown and changed a great deal.  Society itself outgrew the limits of that comics code, and comics have matured again.

Books written in this format have been awarded the Pulitzer prize (Art Spiegelman’s collected Maus) and the Caldecott medal for fiction ( The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick).   Graphic Novels have proven a fertile ground for movies in many genre, not merely the cape and tights superhero flicks (see Road to Perdition, Persepolis, 300, V for Vendetta, among many others).

In a world where many children’s first access to Story comes not from books but from a visual format, in DVD or TV show, computer or console games, the role of a book that can take full advantage of the instant accessibility of images is increasingly important.  In this era when newspapers are dying out perhaps we should re-learn the lessons that Joe Pulitzer figured out 200 years ago.   For years now the only growth industry within the publishing world has been that of books written in this format.   It should be self-evident: Graphic Novels encourage reading.   Actual books.  That’s a good thing.

The trick as always lies in finding Quality stories and books.  And that of course is what sites like this are about.

In that vein (hunting for stories that make my eyeballs dance) I recently walked the show floor at the New York Comics Convention with my sonar pinging, sculling the aisles for hidden treasures.   I tend to walk the floor to scope things out on day one, then return on later days to pick up things I must have.

On my last day, so far empty handed, I decided to load up before heading home and stopped by the Archaia booth.  They had a buy-one-get-one sale where I stocked up on hardcovers of favorite comics for my own home shelves.

There I discovered a book that opened that barn door in my head and let the prairie sky in.

The book is Royden Lepp’s  Rust: Visitor in the Field.

Some years following a ruinous world war, a young farmer struggles to keep his family farm in working order. But the arrival of a boy in a jet pack and the menace that follows bring an immediate danger to his struggle, and raise further questions.

Sepia toned art recalls faded photographs from a bygone era. The heft and clank of the war machines sputter and pop like diesel engines, suggesting a plausible technology both advanced and somehow, very last-century.

As a native of the Canadian prairie, Royden Lepp evokes the wide open but never empty spaces of the American heartlands, here in lower 48 and with our neighbors to the north.   The contrast of these implacable broad sunny flatlands with the desperate immediacy of violent action calls to mind how isolated are these family farms.   If you are to survive, it will be by wit, toil, determination and perhaps the help of a distant neighbor.

A beautiful luminous light suffuses the book, even when driving a lone motorcycle under a starry night sky.

Some war violence bumps this book onto our young adult shelves.  Though the message and tone would be appreciated by all ages, the realistic setting may prove a bit scary for our early graders.

I nominated this book for the YALSA list of best Graphic Novels of the year.    Sadly I sent my nomination in on Friday the 28th, and nominations closed on the 31st;  the book was only released this past August, thus I doubt it will catch a 2nd nomination unless the committee is paying VERY close attention, but, c’est la guerre.  Still, it may not go unnoticed, apparently Fox Studios has optioned it for a movie deal.

By all means though, check it out, I suspect you’ll be as eager for volume two as I am.

Discovering new artists and chatting with favorites is always the best part of the Convention, I highly recommend you attend at least one Con, either here or the Small Press Expo in Bethesda for this reason.

My favorite section of the show is always the Artists’ Alley and Independent comics aisles.  Here you get to chat a bit with comics creators,  folks who have spent many long hours in a chiropractic nightmare, hunched over drawing desks or computer screens hoping to communicate their inner vision to an appreciative audience.  This is one of the only chances they get to see their audience face to face, to find out if their dream translates, whether or not it transmogrifies into money.  You meet a fair lot of generally nice guys. eager to chat about their work.

Nice guys with great books include:

Brian Clevenger and Scott Wegener of Atomic Robo ( a great YA book full of Action Science.  Like Hellboy without the Hell.  Will review soon).  Chris Giarrusso of G-Man (previously reviewed)  and Jacob Chabot of The Mighty Skullboy Army (will review as soon as he writes another one, consarn it!   Both G-Man and Mighty Skullboy are great all-ages books, good humor, I was happy to find out that Chabot and Giarusso are pals).

Artists I will keep an eye on included Sergio Calvet of Chibi Comics (Samurai Dinosaur, Skyjack and the Forty Thieves).

I’ll review my notes and add any others, but will probably review them all one by one in the future anyway.  I’m prepping an order for great books I found at the NYCC, so watch this space and watch our shelves.

I’m not 100% how I answered that or if I answered adequately, in part because I’ve never consciously considered it.  I’m fairly sure my answer was something along the lines of “Um, I know what I like?”   –and that, being an illustrator and writer myself, and having read a great deal of comics and being  in the business of thinking about them I have a basis of knowledge against which to weigh or measure a work of art.

But that sort of begs the question, the logical fallacy of circular reasoning:  ‘I know a lot because I know a lot’.

What’s more intriguing is to examine what it is my brain is doing when I assess a comic.    The question is not “Why do I know what I like?”  but  “What is ‘like’ like?”  or “What makes ‘good’ good?”

I may be thinking about that for some time, but here is my first strafing pass at it:

Being a visual person, the first thing I notice about a book is the art.  Every artist has their own visual signature.  Weight of line, scratchy and sketchy vs claire ligne (clean style, a la Tintin, et al), saturation of color, breadth of palette — in truth these things can vary widely and still catch my attention.  Here what I’m initially looking for is whether this work is distinctive:  have I seen anything like it?  Does it remind me of other artists I like?

Royden Lepp's remarkable 'Rust: Visitor in the Field"

But novelty alone is not what makes a work ‘good’.  Personally having bought mediocre books or seen ‘bleh’ movies off the strength of a good review, I’m aware of what I’d call Jaded Critic Syndrome.    That is, having read umpteen dozen books in the last x-number of hours, sometimes the reviewer is desperate for something that doesn’t remind them of the last ten books they read.  Thus a stinker may catch critical acclaim for risking something new, though it never catches a wide audience since it’s simply trying too hard to be different.

Still, one reason why I rarely review mainstream comics lies in that breadth of sameness.  Artists who learned to draw by reading comics, and so on back to ‘a finity’ often don’t stand out from each other.  It’s axiomatic I suppose, since they are learning to draw the same uniform over and over again, the work often appears relatively uniform.

–Incidentally, one of many reasons you can tell superhero comics are mostly written by overgrown post-adolescent ‘dudes’ and not women lies in that conceit of the superhero costume.

Only occasionally you will read about a superhero using his ‘spare costume’ when his first one gets destroyed.  The blasé acceptance of what this implies is pretty gnarly given real  life implications.  Really dude?  You have only one pair of clothes you wear every day?

Anyone who has taken a yoga or pilates class understands how gamey that super unitard would be after even one night of web-swinging.   This without even considering the biohazard potential of blood and snot and whatnot from various fistfights.  (Radioactive spider blood, even).

And while the average postpubescent comics fanboy might be comfortable in that favorite shirt every day, I’m pretty sure a sensible superheroine wouldn’t mind switching up that image now and then, depending on the weather or what enemy she expected to battle, or whether she had a public appearance that day, and so on.  That’s just practical.  People judge you on these things, might as well use it to your advantage, and send a message beyond:  ‘I only own one shirt’…

Anyway.   So.

What about the art?  I like the lope and flow of a line.  The composition of a panel.  Whether the story makes sense without words.  Whether you can infer from panel to panel what is happening even in the split-second freeze-frame of an action sequence.  Whether characters are distinguishable from each other, and more so, if  they can develop personalities with the sound ‘off’.  And so on.  Do the drawings have ‘life’ or do they feel painterly and static.   Are they able to draw ‘Story’.

From 'Rust: Visitor in the Field', the boy called 'Jet' makes his entrance...

This is not something I’m conscious of, it’s just a question of whether my pupils dilate when I pick the book up, if I feel a breath of space in my chest, if the eyeballs slickly pivoting in my skull choose to ricochet around a page of their own accord.

Most importantly: does the animation studio of neural gnomes in my visual cortex start churning out pictures in my imagination to fill out the detail missing between panels.  Does the gap between panels pulse with the current of the story, and does the current carry me along with it?

Once the art grabs the eye, next lies the question of  the story itself.

Does the work make me feel something?  Do I lose awareness of my immediate surroundings?  Am I pulled into the immediacy of action?   Do I want to know what happens next?  Do the characters come alive?    Do I like them, or detest them?  (Both reactions are interesting, better than boring).  Can I hear the dialogue in my head?  Does it sound like distinct characters talking or one writer jabbering to himself?

Does it matter?  Do I learn something, see a part of the world I never knew?  And do I care?  Does it make me feel anything?  Does the story have pathos, or catharsis?

And then later, resonance:   Am I still thinking about it, does the world live on in my head after I have put the book down?  Am I greedy for another reading or a next volume?  Would I recommend it to someone?   This last category would seem to be the criteria for an award-winning book.  Does it have value beyond the final page of the book.

Here then are the Takoma Park Maryland Library criteria for Quality Comics, in brief:

1. Art: can the artist draw Story.  Can you infer personality or mood?  Does the work have humor, or pathos, inherent in the pictures.  Did any panel make you laugh out loud by the images alone?  Does it ‘live’ on the page and in the spaces between panels?  Is the composition — what is framed by the panels– dynamic and interesting on its own.
2. Story.  Does it flow, do I want to know what happens next?  Do I care about the characters?   Is it credible,  am I willing to suspend disbelief, does it make sense within it’s own world?
3.  Dialogue.  Can I hear it in my head?  Do characters have distinct voices or does it read only as though a writer is talking to himself through two different characters.  Do I forget that the writer is there?  Would it be fun to read aloud to a crew of kids on a Tuesday afternoon?
4. Resonance.  Do I care?  Would I recommend it to anyone?  Did I learn something?  Am I eagerly waiting for the next volume?

That’s my first pass at it.  I expect I’ll return to refine this, or post a follow-up later.  For now I will certainly be more conscious what sorts of dominos are toppling in my head the next time a pick up a book than makes me go ‘ah…’

[Next:  a review of  'Rust:  Visitor in the Field' published by Archaia Entertainment -- answering 'yes' to all of the above.  Plus leftovers and musings from the recent New York Comics Con].

Hello,
I’m planning on introducing a reluctant reader group to graphic novels and I am thusly wondering what would be your first 15-20 buys?  

I am planning on introducing the titles and then letting the boys select one title then maybe next session having them report on their book.

Do you have any experience with reading groups, and if so does this seem like a format that would work, or should I run it differently?

For reluctant readers– and, well in general– one of our most
successful programs is our ‘Comics Jam’.    This is a monthly
read-aloud book club where we project comics onto a big screen using a
document camera, then allow kids to help read selections with me, out
loud to the group.  This can be a few comic strips, or a couple pages
of  a graphic novel, whatever they pick (well, so long as it is basically
PG  rated or gentler).

I encourage them to read in character voices, etc. and since they are
reading with me, and since the rest of the group is focusing on the
picture not on the person reading, and since they are encouraged to
use  funny voices, it’s less a referendum on whether or not they are doing
it right and more about the experience of the book.

After a few readers I usually take over and read a section of a
longer-form story, to allow the readers to really get into the flow of
the book and develop interest and desire for what happens next.
Usually this means we have a mad scramble for the few copies of the book we
have on hand.  Still, the fact that the book is projected on a screen means
we don’t need to have 20 copies of the same book (as with a
traditional book club).

And the sneaky thing is, since kids are comfortable and familiar with
watching screens, we use the medium of the projected image to funnel
them back to the actual page.  Suddenly the book is the movie star.
Pretty cool.

So, Okay:

A quick list of great read-aloud books for the middle grades.  Good
action, good humor, good story pace, entertaining for both boys and
girls:

• G-Man. (series, 2 volumes) by Chris Giarrusso
• Bone (series, 9 volumes total in the main series) by Jeff Smith
• Amulet (series, 4 volumes) by Kazu Kibuishi
• Franklin Richards (Series) by Marc Sumerak and Chris Eliopoulis
• Zita the Space Girl, by Ben Hatke
• Ghostopolis, by Doug TenNapel
• Missile Mouse, (series, currently 2 volumes) by Jake Parker
• Usagi Yojimbo (series , 25 volumes so far) by Stan Sakai
• Meanwhile, by Jason Shiga (very interactive, it’s a visual choose-your-own-adventure type of book, surprisingly fun to have the players help make the choices, make sure you mark the last change with  a sticky note or the like since ‘players’ will want to back up and change their answer).
• The Three Thieves, Book One: Tower of Treasure, by Scott Chantler (series, but book two is a bit more talky).
• Pang, The Wandering Shaolin Monk, by Ben Costa (– on order, not yet in our library, I couldn’t surrender my signed copy)
• Dungeon, Zenith, Vol 1: Duck Heart by Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim (but not successive volumes in the series which are appropriate for older readers).
• All-Action Classics No. 3: The Odyssey, adapted by Tim Mucci and Ben Caldwell
• Spy vs Spy by Antonio Prohias.  (This is wordless, but you can have the kids get used to narrating the action and making up their own dialogue).

Quite often with reluctant readers you find they are eager to read comics that have media tie-ins (Simpsons, various Disney properties, Marvel Adventures Spider-man, Teen Titans Adventures, Dragon Ball Z and Naruto) — and that’s all fair.  Familiarity reinforces the idea that books aren’t completely foreign objects.

However with the list of choices above I try to isolate the idea that you can find some great stories in books that you won’t be able to find in a movie or TV show (yet).  Again: the book is the star.

If anyone is interested in checking out how it works, we run our Comics Jam on the first Tuesday of the month, at 4PM afterschool in the Kids Room. (Next up: this Tuesday October 4th!  Come check it out!) .  You can usually find it advertised on the Library Kids room blog:

http://www.takomapark.info/library/children/

For school media folks in the area:   I’d be happy to get you started with an initial Comics Jam to demo the concept and give ideas of tricks and tips for making it work well.  (There are some tricks to keep the story flowing and ways to catch their attention up front).   Just contact me and we can try to set up a Jam!

davidb at takomagov dot org

Thanks to all who attended our discussion on Comics in Libraries at the Montgomery County Public Schools  in-service learning day this summer.    As usual it feels like we never have enough time to talk through all possible topics, so I’ll try to circle back to touch on issues that were raised in each session, or questions that came to us from participants afterwards.

What are some Age-appropriate books for middle schoolers and young adults, not too ‘childish’?

There are many.  The great thing about middle schoolers is that they are willing to read a wide swath of books, all-ages to teen issues.   All ages books check out well to– well — all ages.  With middle school kids you can also risk ventures into some manga, and put some books in front of them with deeper themes or content.  I will begin to preview some of these books of the next couple months.  But I’ll detail a few general interest books for YA’s after the jump.

How do you decide of a book is All-ages vs Young Adult vs Adult?

For the purposes of our collection we designate books as “YA”  if they have violence beyond cartoony images (but short of realistic gore and innards) adult situations (near nudity, but not nude; allusions to sexual situations without explicit display) and the occasional off-color language.  Also included are books with sufficiently advanced reading level or content that may not be interesting to younger readers.

Books that may prove excellent for middle school age, but too steep for the younger grades include:

• Naruto.  (violence, near nudity, etc)
• Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z.  (ditto)
• Amulet series by Kazu Kibuishi (mostly all-ages, but a parent dies early on, and some parents may be threatened by this, where the kids seem to have less of an issue about it)
• Mouse Guard (realistic violence)
• Thor (series, Marvel Comics, written by J. Michael Straczynski, advanced interest level)
• any of various Star Wars series by Dark Horse Comics (violence)
• the graphic novel adaptations of the Artemis Fowl series (some gunplay)
• Runaways (series, Marvel Comics.  ‘What if your parents were supervillains?’ plays well with the YA crowd)
• Usagi Yojimbo (much sword play, this one walks a line between all ages and YA, the violence is cartoony but characters are killed every three pages or so in some issues, thus we play it safer.)
• The Simpsons (series)
• Zits (comic strip series)

Buying superhero comics for schools can be tricky since many mainstream comics publishers (Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse) walk a line between YA and Adult content, but it’s easier to risk a superhero buy with this age group compared to the younger grades.  This is the age when kids begin to grow most interested in the Supers, and many mass media tie-ins are marketed to this age.

What are some YA graphic novels of interest to Girls?

I find girls of this age are trickier to buy for, since girls tend to mature more quickly than boys and are commonly interested in more adult themes earlier on.   The middle school girls hereabouts are interested in books that I might be more likely to buy for a high school audience (Bleach, Death Note among them), though they too will read all-ages action adventures, etc.

There used to be a series called ElfQuest that satisfied an interest in romance, action, adventure, strong female heroes, etc. appropriate for girls and boys both.    But sadly they are no longer in print (currently seeking a publisher and marketing partner).

Of the books mentioned above, both Amulet and Runaways have crossover appeal to both boys and girls.  I find the X-Men titles check out well to girls since they commonly have strong female characters.

For books that pull a strong audience of girls you will find more offerings in the manga format.  Here is a sampling of books that check out well to this audience at our library, that should be age-appropriate

• Fruits Basket
• Yotsuba & !
• Inubaka
• Spider-Man loves Mary Jane; and Spider-Man: Mary Jane (Marvel comics series, now out of print)
• Miki Falls (series by Mark Crilley)
• Girl Genius (series by Phil Foglio)
• Chibi Vampire
• Rosario + Vampire
• Vampire Kisses

Vampires clearly have an edge when it comes to combining romance, relationships and adventure.

Letters! ‘ Shonen what?’

I’m always happy to answer any letters I get to help Librarians flesh out their collections.   Feel free to write to me at work: DavidB at takomagov dot org (you know how to translate that, I expect).

Here’s one letter:

Dave,
I came to your session at the MCPS professional development day in August, so I thought you might be a good person to ask.  I work at Blake High School, and we have a student that keeps asking us why we don’t have Shonen Jump.  When we looked it up, we were overwhelmed with the number of things listed under Shonen Jump.  Is there a certain thing that is more often referred to under that name? Or what specific things would you say are more popular?
…
Media Assistant
James Hubert Blake High School

Shonen Jump is either of two things:  the publishing line that produces popular titles like Naruto and Dragon Ball Z, or the magazine that serializes these stories (both are distributed in the US by Viz Media).  Probably he’s hoping you’ll subscribe to the magazine since this keeps the reader up to date on a number of titles in a single volume.

The term ‘Shonen’ means ‘boys’, especially a typical Japanese schoolboy.  Shonen manga is generally thought of as ‘fighting’ manga.  The content will have a fair bit of violence, some gore and occasional ‘fanservice’ (gratuitous panty-shots and scantily clad women, or allusions to lust –of the steam-shooting-out-of-your ears variety; or in the manga idiom: eyeballs bulging, head sweating, nose shooting blood.  I know, weird right?).

Since you’re in highschool there should be no problem with the content, the magazine is intended for ages 10-18, which is a wide swath of interest levels, and occasionally skews more towards the age 18 than age 10, but high school kids can probably handle it.  If you were a middle school librarian, I’d say some issues will surely have questionable content for the age.

You might find it useful to subscribe to see an overview of a variety of titles that will be collected into paperback volumes, this lets you preview a few series to decide if any of them look worth adding.

If you were in middle school I’d say I wouldn’t worry too much about storage for back issues since your copies will likely be either shredded or stolen before then.  High school may not have quite the same heavy readership for these though.

Just by way of information, if you choose to take Shonen Jump as a serial, you might also consider its sister publication ‘Shojo Beat’.  “Shojo” manga are comics intended for girls age 10-18.  These will typically be heavy on the romance and misunderstanding and relationships and impossible-to-resolve differences,  quirkiness and oddities.

–EDIT:

Alas, I’m told Shojo Beat is out of business as a magazine as of  2009.  However publisher Viz Media is still keeping the name as an imprint for their girls’ manga, so this is one more way of picking titles of interest to girls.

Doug TenNapel (sorta rhymes with ‘ten-APE-hell’)  produces quirky and interesting books that challenge the brain.

I enjoy every panel of ‘em though they require some cataloging gymnastics because while they have an all-ages sensibility (an appreciation for the gross, an appealingly goofy sense of violence, enough action to keep the story moving, and kid heroes who have wit and cunning) still there’s usually one panel per book that causes me to promote ‘em to our Young Adult side.

Reading through the panels you’ll occasionally hit a speed bump in an errant curse word, a realistically rendered birth scene (Earthboy Jacobus), a splotch of realistic gore (Frink), or a full size Tyrannosaur dropping  steaming heaps of dung on a neighbor’s car (Tommysaurus Rex)…

His relatively recent (2010) Ghostopolis tip-toes this line well.  There are just enough lines of low-brow slapstick humor to engage the Captain Underpants set, and sufficient interesting plotlines (and even romance!) to appeal to older readers.   This is a book I can read to the masses at our monthly Comics Jam (comics read-aloud programs) to hold them in rapt attention — without worrying too much that I’ll hit a squeamish bit.

Doug TenNapel is a fairly outspoken political conservative in ‘real’ life, a defender of Christendom against the incursions of modern culture.   An interesting and witty if occasionally prickly paladin of his beliefs, he maintains a thought provoking blog dialoguing on his mindset.  Interestingly, in his art-life, while the subtext of some of his graphic adventures resonate with the themes of the difficulty of maintaining faith under adversity, he’s never preachy.  Though almost all of his  books touch on the topic of faith in some way,  his handling of the subject is generally both nuanced and interestingly conflicted.

Oddly, in ‘Ghostopolis’, a book about a character who is pulled through a portal into the afterlife, there is scant evidence of the common orthodoxy of any religious tenets.

Well okay, there’s a near-mythical ten foot tall Tuskeegee airman, who built the cities of the afterlife in seven days, and who secretly shepherds the deserving into the after-Afterlife, but mostly we find that  ‘what comes after’ is a crowded ecosystem teeming with a multivariate ensemble of zombies, specters, boogeymen, skeletons, goblins, mummies, and bugs.   This is more akin to the afterlife of ‘Beetlejuice’ than it is to Dante’s Divine Comedy.

The plot involves a  jaded and sour ghost-hunting federal agent, who accidentally sends a living boy into the afterlife.  He goes AWOL from his agency in an attempt to track him down.   The story follows both the agent (Frank Gallows) and the boy (Garth Hale) as they become embroiled in the politics of the afterlife.  Epic adventure, and loopy humor ensue.  The Both primary and secondary characters show heart and humanity as the story follows its arc to a satisfactory conclusion.

I’d highly recommend all of Doug TenNapel’s books as appropriate for highschool level and up.  The titles Creature Tech, Tommysaurus Rex, Iron West and Frink I’d recommend for middle school ages and up.  I’m very pleased to be able to finally be able recommend a Doug TenNapel book for all ages in Ghostopolis.

—

EDIT (9/7/11) — As an add-on, I’d also highly recommend as all-ages appropriate his book  Bad Island, which I’ll review in an up-coming post.

At the New York Comics Convention some years back I sat in on a panel where the Marvel rep discussed the difficulty they had in training their in-house staff to write for an-all ages audience.  He said that for many years they were simply pulling writers and artists from their mainstream books  and instructing them what not to say or draw.  No guns, no blood, no ‘language’ or suggestive situations, and so on.  The results were awkward, uninteresting, clunky.

No surprise since studies show the average age of most comics collectors is over 30, and most comics writers and illustrators nowadays grew up reading comics, and have moved on to adult themes: cynicism, decay of common values, despair, etc…

Generally though the genesis of superhero comics can be understood to be adolescent hormonal fantasies.   Bulgy men and women (with correspondingly exaggerated characteristics of male/female bulgy-ness) swoop across the sky in skintight costumes, solving problems by pounding them to pulp.    These are testosterone surges running rampant.

And if there exists a sort of magical thinking in the idea that you can simply smash your complex problems as they arise, well, what’s wrong with a little magic?  It’s enough to realize that there is supposed to be a moral code that allows you to smash your problems, so long as you are doing so in defense of the helpless and not merely for personal benefit.

Anyway this is all shorthand for the idea that some day, when you are grown, you will have incomprehensible powers to enable you to make problems go away.  Somehow.  And until then, you are embroiled in a war of your own, trying to get a handle on your emerging mutant powers.

All of this subtext is generally over the heads of  those in the pre-tween set. And parents whose kids have discovered superheroes get a little seasick, uncomfortable with the level of violence or frank sexuality barely hidden under a few millimeters of spandex.

Still, one of the functions of storytelling is to help us understand the lay of the land before we get there.  You needn’t check the watering hole for lions if the old silverback of your troop pantomimes that a feline predator lurks there.

So too with the treacherous savannah of adolescence.  Kids tend to like to read about heroes who are their age or just a little bit older.  Archie comics, for instance, are about teenagers, but they are most often read by elementary age and middle school kids.  (Here these are training grounds for how to be socially rotten to each other, not physically brutal, and the stakes are more personal than, say, the SURVIVAL of  the ENTIRE UNIVERSE!!! ).

Anyway, the all-ages stuff that works best within the superhero realm recognizes what is operating here, keeping it above the line:  kids want to see kids, teens,  trying to survive despite their extraordinary differences (superpowers and secret identities) within that social context.

Kids want to read about kids.  And kids still enjoy comics.

In Marvel Adventures Spider-Man:  Thwip!  Paul Tobin (et al) understands this quite well.  His Spidey is the awkward adolescent trying to pass his classes, dodge social thuggery, and maybe meet a girl along the way.  If his life is complicated by weighty obligations and secret oddities, well that serves as a perfect subtext for adolescent angst, and when in costume, also provides an outlet for pent-up frustrations.

Who wouldn’t want to chuck the homework and swoop through Manhattan on a zipline, cracking wise and intimidating bullies to re-think their actions?  Granted, every now and again you have to catch a speeding car with your face, but somehow it seems easier than figuring out whether or not that girl likes you.

The action zips, the witticisms volley between characters, the comic timing swings the story from highrise to lower story to rooftops again in long loopy swoops like webswinging itself.  But without great momentous occasion or epic narrative thrust.

A friend who teaches toddlers once told me that it is a truism among teachers at the Bank Street School of Education that a teacher is most comfortable working with kids who are at the same stage of development that they (the teachers) were when they stopped developing emotionally.  I’m not sure what it says about Paul Tobin as a person, but as a writer I will say it seems he understands adolescence quite well.

As a parent or Librarian if you have tweenagers looking for a superhero book, you’d do well to give them Thwip!

I’ll follow up in the next post with a few other superhero titles appropriate for all ages.