“Of all the places that should have comic books, I think libraries should be at the top of the list. Sadly some still haven’t caught on and I’m left not getting to read the stuff I want. So much for finding everything I want at my local library.
As a general rule of economics and pop culture, when comics become more popular the access to comics becomes easier. There are online comic stores, regular comics stores, and now digital comics available in electronic formats. As much as I enjoy this new access to comics, I’m not interested in buying everything I want to read. If there was a place to borrow books for free I’d use it for comics. Oh wait, there is, it’s a library. The only problem is that the libraries I visit only seem to stock comics sparingly.
I’m a working stiff. I’m not rolling in money or time. If I was I would buy the books I want to read and sell the ones I don’t enjoy. That involves money to buy all the books and time to setup online auctions, travel to the post office, confirming the buyer, etc; like I said, time and money are two things that I do not have in excess – even though I make an effort once a week to share my thoughts in this article once a week. Anyway, my local library should be able to help me in this situation. They should be able to provide access to comics and graphic novels for me to try. But they don’t. I’ve even tried libraries out of my neighborhood and out of state.”
(via Pop Syndicate)
August 14, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Portland Oregon’s library is swimming in comics and zines.
August 15, 2008 at 12:45 am
This snippet left out his call for mainstream comics, not the indie gems and reworkings of stale characters that I assume most of us think about.
August 16, 2008 at 7:03 pm
The library near my old school got me back into reading comics. It had a bunch of the 90s Vertigo stuff. I am eternally indebted to whomever that librarian was. It is a good idea. I saw a lot of kids reading ‘Bone’ by Jeff Smith as well as the more grown up stuff. Nothing like a whiff of the verboten to get kids into the habit of reading.