Text of my presentation at ALA Annual 2009 in Chicago. I was part of a panel on combating self-censorship, and spoke on the topic of Comics and Graphic Novels.

1. Good morning, everyone. When it comes to
collecting comics and graphic novels, much of the
difficulty i think people have stems from what I see as
two major stumbling blocks, prejudices even, that
everyone seems to trip over. This is basically what
I’m going to talk about. I don’t think I can offer a
whole lot of advice that isn’t already out there; what
I’m really going to do is issue a couple of challenges,
ones that are easier to get over than you might think.
I believe that the key to a defendable comic collection
lies in shedding some of the attitudes still directed
towards comics, and according them the same respect as
every other book that we buy.
Probably the most glaring issue when we begin to
talk about collection development for comics and
graphic novels is, of course, the issue of the medium
itself. Unlike the other print areas under discussion
today, comics are a largely visual storytelling medium
where much, if not all, of what is going on is not
described by prose, but pictured as art. And this is
where much of the hesitation and consternation when
buying comics comes from. Now, without going into a
lengthy scientific explanation, i think it’s still
pretty safe to make this one statement: pictures, by
and large, have a much more immediate and arresting
effect on human perception than descriptive text.
We’ve all heard the phrase ‘a picture’s worth a

2. thousand words.’ (For our purposes here, I imagine we
could rewrite it as “A picture of one naked boob is
worth a hundred pages of Zane.”) Well, said quote, as
it was originally written in 1927, actually reads like
this: “A picture’s meaning is worth ten thousand
words.” I like this a lot better, because it paints a
more harmonious picture. It says, at least to me, that
pictures and words are not so terribly opposed to each
other, that they’re just a different way of telling a
story. And herein lies the point.
I often find that a lot of my colleagues are pretty
freaked when collecting comics because of images
portraying certain things that they wouldn’t be freaked
by in a “regular” book. A great many of us have books
in our teen collections that describe adult themes,
sexual situations, drug use, and violence. And we’ll
defend the presence of these books in our collections,
and most often rightly so. But many find it much more
difficult to accept showing these things as opposed to
describing them. My question, and my first challenge,
really, is why? Is the violence in Steve NIle’s 30
Days of Night any more horrific than that of Darren
Shan’s Demonata series? The sexual situations in
Melvin Burgess’ Doing It or Daria Snadowsky’s Anatomy
of a Boyfriend are actually far more explicit than
nearly anything I have in my comic collection that
might be considered risque, whether it be Neil

3. Gaiman’s Sandman or CLAMP’s Chobits. And if we can
defend these words, then we can defend art covering the
same subjects.
Now, the second, and possibly less glaring issue,
is the way comics are regarded by the majority of
people in the United States. While admittedly things
have changed for the better over the last 15 years or
so, comics are still by and large considered, well,
many things. They are ‘just for kids,’ ‘junk,’ and of
course, ‘not “real” books.’ This is a knot that sits
in the American subconscious and has been sitting there
since 1954, when the United States Senate, with the aid
of child psychologist Frederic Wertham, declared to the
United States public that comics were responsible for
every depravity known to man, read only by the
intellectually devoid, and possibly responsible for all
juvenile crime. The comic book industry at the time,
in their infinite wisdom, folded like cheap suits and
created the Comics Code Authority, one of the worst
examples of self-censorship you have ever seen. Scott
McCloud describes it well, saying the Code was like a
“...list of requirements a film needs to receive a G
rating was doubled, and there were no other acceptable
ratings!" Essentially, the entire industry
collectively said “OK, we’ll never again publish
anything that’ll be remotely objectionable to anyone
under the age of 12 ever again!” And the mainstream

4. comic publishers didn’t, not for a long time. And
however wrongheaded, the American public has believed
these things ever since. Even us. I see far too many
articles painting comics as “something to hook
reluctant readers,” with the implication that we’ll
move them on to “real” books as soon as they’re ready.
So where does all of this leave us? In terms of our
collecting comics and graphic novels for our teen
areas, it leads me here.
Your collection development policy (and i do hope
you have one!!!!) is there to act as a guideline for
the materials you buy, and also as a form of insulation
to protect against challenges and censorship. Look at
your policy; does it include comics and graphic novels
in it’s language? It should! The generation of teens
we are working with right now are far more visually
oriented than we ever were or are; and a fair majority
of them are now comic readers at some level. In 2008,
comics accounted for 12% of my overall collection.
They accounted for 39% of my circulation. The classic
image of the kid leaving with a stack of books still
exists, but there are now nearly always a few comics or
manga mixed in. I firmly believe that the same
reasoning we use to defend the words in the books that
we buy can be used to defend the art in the comics we

5. buy, and that should help deflect some of the fear of
images.
Now that being said, it is true that not every
comic belongs in the teen area. So how do we decide
whether to place a comic in our teen area or not? The
same way we decide such things for anything else,
really. Think of it this way. We have collections for
children, for teens, and for adults. Why? Is it
because everything in the adult collections is
shocking, scary and pornographic? Of course not. We
put Ian McEwan and Maeve Binchy and Don Delillo in our
adult collections because they write books for adults.
The same truth exists in the comic book publishing
world; there are many comic writers who write works
that are intended for, and will appeal largely to,
adults. Now, nearly every comic publisher and manga
licenser has their own rating system now for the books
they publish. That’s nice, and often helpful, but
don’t use them as a be-all end-all method for deciding
where to place an item. Appeal is a far more important
assessment tool than arbitrary publishers ratings, and
reading the comics you’re buying is of paramount
importance. In the end, the same judgement you use
buying books should be used when buying comics, which
brings me to my next point.
While writing this presentation, I noticed that
there were an awful lot of articles published in the

6. library world that seemed to run according to the same
theme. “You don’t need to know anything about comics
to have a graphic novel collection!”
I beg to differ! While that may have been true 10
years ago when libraries were first sticking their toes
into comic waters, I don’t believe it’s true any
longer. As I said before, comics have become almost
fully integrated into the mainstream consciousness of
the current generation of teens we serve. We owe them
the same diligence we show when collecting books when
collecting comics. And there is now a wealth of
resources for understanding the comic publishing
industry, as well as its authors, terminology and other
ins and outs.
This also means learning about manga. I don’t need
to tell you how popular it’s become. I will tell you
this: manga is published in Japan, and Japan, folks,
is not America. This is an art form being created by a
culture whose attitudes, thought patterns and value
sets are quite different from what we’re used to here.
They also regard, and have always regarded, sequential
art as equal to regular prose writing. And everyone,
and I do mean everyone, in Japan reads manga. It
accounts for upwards of 40% of their publishing
industry and there are titles published for anyone from
young children to adults. Again, this becomes a
question of not only noting the publisher’s ratings,

7. but reading the books and learning about where they
come from. And also again, the resources now out there
are extensive.
In a perfect future world, I believe we won’t have
graphic novel sections in our libraries, and sequential
art will be on the same shelves with all the other
books; you’ll find the Sandman books under Gaiman,
right next to Stardust and Neverwhere. Our first step
towards that day begins when we shed our prejudices,
and accord comics the same diligence, respect, and due
process that we afford every other material in our
collections.
So thats it. I know this wasn’t much in the way of
actual advice, but then as I said, the resources are
out there - the real question is can you look at comics
as objectively as you look at everything else in your
collection, and judge not through fear, but through
knowledge instead.