Wonder Woman...

[fajrdrako]

Lately I have been getting graphic novels from the public library. Five years ago, they had a huge collection of graphic novels in French - "albums" - everything from Asterix to Schuittens and Enki Bilal, not to mention French translations of Watchmen and X-Men comics. I wrote letters to the library board over the years begging for the inclusion of some English-language graphic novels.

Now we have some, and I'm loving it. Some of them are beautiful hardcover art books of fairly recent material - reprints from The Incredible Hulk by Bruce Jones, Ultimate Spider-Man and Daredevil by Brian Michael Bendis, and Ultimate X-Men by Mark Millar, along with his Ultimates. Some odds and ends of DC comics too, not as nicely packaged - Mark Waid's Flash: Terminal Velocity, for example, some JLA graphic novels, and the brilliant work by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale on Batman: The Long Halloween and other Batman works. They have some manga (Ranma 1/2, some works by Clamp, Fushigi Yûgi, Astro Boy), and some independents - Tom Strong, Usagi Yojimbo, Akiko (yay!) and all the Elfquest ever printed - for some reason.

All these are in the catalogue under "juvenile fiction". I don't know about you, but I would never consider Ultimates to be "juvenile fiction" or even particularly suitable for children.

If you look up "Batman" you get two listings of novelizations and movies for every graphic novel or comic book listed. Perhaps more. Look up "Wonder Woman" and you get 31 entries - songs, books, history and essays - and not one comic book or graphic novel.

This doesn't seem right to me.

Likewise, if you look up Alan Moore, you'll find the movie From Hell with Johnny Depp, but not the comic it's based on. Why not?

I couldn't expect the library to get every American comic or every graphic novel or every comic reprinted as a trade paperback. (Much as I would like it!) It would be nice, though, if they kept up with more.

When I first started to do this, I thought I was saving money. After all, I got to read many issues of brilliant Spider-Man stories by J. Michael Straszcinski, some remarkable work on Ultimates that I wouldn't have otherwise seen, and Bruce Jones' wonderful Incredible Hulk stories. I read these with amazement. I had no idea how good these comics were. I can't afford to collect everything, I can't even afford to sample too many different titles.

And now... dammit, now I know how good Incredible Hulk is I feel the need to buy it on a regular basis. That's not saving money. Fun, though. Spider-Man, too, the Straszcinski version.

There are some surprising lacks. Look up Neil Gaiman and you get his prose books (some of them) but the only comic book series is The Books of Magic. Now, I'm glad The Books of Magic is there, but why not the major work for which Gaiman is most famous, The Sandman? The leading comic of its time and an influence on the whole field. An example to writers of what they could aspire to and an example to editors of what they could get away with publishing. Internationally acclaimed and a damn good read. Totally missing, along with Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Watchmen. But they do have Tom Strong.

I can only think that they are deliberately picking comics that they think (rightly or, often, wrongly) are aimed at children.

On behalf of adults, I protest.