COMIC BOOKS AND LIBRARIES

It is not terribly surprising that American libraries tend to ignore comic books. As an art form, comics are not appreciated in this country as they are in

Michael R. Lavin

Lavin is Business and Management Subject Specialist, Lockwood Library, State University of New York at Buf- falo, Buffalo, NY 14260 <mrlavin@acsu.nbuffalo.edu>.

Europe or Japan. As literature, they are generally regarded as the worst form of escapist, juvenile read-

ing. From a practical standpoint, comic books are fragile and difficult to preserve. Even those libraries which do try to maintain browsing collections find

that comics are easy targets for theft and they do not hold up well to multiple circulations.

“But wait,” says the comic book aficionado, “Today’s comic books are worthy of study, both as lit- erature and art.” To make his point, he reaches into the

comic apologist’s arsenal and pulls out its most power- ful argument: “After all, Art Spiegelman won a special Pulitzer Prize for his work on Maus: A Survivor’s Tale.“’ And there can be no denying that modern aca-

demics do study comic book genres, right? Well, maybe. A quick search of ML4 Bibliography identifies fifty-four articles published within the past five years on the topic of comic books. Most of these appear in

such journals as Studies in Popular Culture, the Journal of Popular Culture, and Discourse. A similar search in Wilson Art Abstracts retrieves thirty articles from the same time period. Trawling the literature of the social sciences nets more meager results: eighteen articles from Sociofile, five from Psyclnfo, and so on. A mere thirty-seven doctoral dissertations have been published on the topic of comic books, twenty-two of them since

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1990. So, the realist recognizes that comic book research does not represent a hotbed of modern schol- arship.*

Nevertheless, comic books are an important part of our popular culture. More than 500 comic book titles are published each month, the product of over 100 US publishers. As artifacts, these books deserve to be pre- served, and what institution is better equipped to store and maintain printed material than libraries? And what about the library patron who is simply looking for a good story? Like all forms of literature and art, the

quality of comic books ranges from abysmal to bril- liant. Every conceivable genre is represented, from standard super-hero fare to realistic fiction, and even nonfiction. Libraries are neglecting their mission as readers’ advisors when they choose to ignore this

vibrant field of publishing.

So, how do we get around the problem that the phys- ical limitations of comic books make them ill suited for

library collections? One response, as we shall see in a moment, is to establish special collections with con-

trolled access. For general libraries, the preferred solu- tion is to purchase trade paperbacks and graphic novels. The very best of the comic book industry’s output is

available in sturdier formats suitable for any library collection, and hundreds are published every year.

The purpose of this Serials Review Forum is to intro- duce librarians to the world of comic books and graphic novels. The articles will be presented over two issues of the journal. The current issue contains four articles.

The first is an overview of those special libraries which maintain comic book research collections, including summaries of their holdings and procedures. To supple-

ment these profiles, the second article provides a

detailed look at one of America’s leading comic book

libraries, the Comic Arts Collection at Michigan State

University. The third feature is an interesting piece

comparing the decisions made by comic book collec-

tors to those of serials librarians. In the process, the

author describes many of the cataloging and processing

problems which are unique to the world of comics. Part

I of “Comic Books and Libraries” concludes with a

glossary of commonly-used comic books terms, to

assist the novice in understanding this medium.

Parts II and III of this Forum will appear in the next

two issues of Serials Review. They will provide profiles

of the major comic books companies publishing today,

as well as offering briefer looks at a representative few

of the “alternative” comics publishers. Reviews of doz-

ens of leading comic book titles will also be given. A

final article will compare the major comic book period-

icals (both popular magazines and scholarly journals)

currently published.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Spiegelman’s stunning, brutally frank autobiographical tale unfolds on two levels: one relates the story of a Holo- caust victim, and how he survives the Nazi death camps; the second describes the uncomfortable relationship between

that survivor and his adult son, who struggles to understand

his father’s life. The first volume was published by Pantheon

Books in 1986, with a second volume appearing in 199 1.

2. Citation counts were obtained by searching the afore-

mentioned indexes, together with Dissertation Abstracts

International, in February of 1998.

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