Yesterday’s New York Times had a pretty fascinating article about how libraries deal with books that offend some of their patrons, with Hergé’s Tintin au Congo being kept under lock and key and only available via appointment at the Brooklyn Library serving as the article’s lead. (The image above, from the 1946 color version of the story, ought to explain why it offends some patrons, if you forget the controversy that accompanied the book’s republication a few years back).

The other graphic novel that gets mentioned in the piece is Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s self-proclaimed work of pornography, Lost Girls, which an Alice Knapp of the Connecticut Library Association used as an example when talking to reporter Alison Leigh Cowan:  

Ms. Knapp considered reclassifying the novel as an “823,” a call number that would effectively hide the book inside the vast literature department where erotica was parked, or leaving it where it was, grouped in plain sight with other “graphic novels.”

She chose to tough it out.

Why? “It was in constant circulation,” she said. “The reviews for it were outstanding, and then we decided we bought it to be used, going back to the idea that books should be used. That’s why we’re buying them.”

I know from experience that graphic novels can present special challenges to libraries, librarians and patrons (One of the things I do to keep a roof over my head, food on my table and new comics in my hands is work part-time at public library). That’s because of the simple fact that comics constitute a more visual medium than prose—nudity and sex scenes written in prose are left to the imagination of the readers, while they need to be drawn out in a comic.

With the possible exception of Lost Girls, you’re unlikely to find anything in your local library with as much sex in it as you’d find among the romance paperbacks (If your local library is even adventurous enough to carry Lost Girls, that is. According to worldcat.org, a website that searches library catalogs by geographic proximity to whatever zipcode you enter, the only libraries in my home state that carry it are university ones).

But to get to the sex scene in a prose novel, you have to actually read it, and even then, it’s just words and imagination, whereas in a comic, you can flip through the pages until you see something that looks prurient or perverted, even, or perhaps especially, out of context. (And someone looking for something to be offended by shouldn’t have too hard a time in any decent adult graphic novel collection).

The only time I was personally faced with a patron object to sex in a graphic novel (and, let’s face it, sex is usually the only sort of images that offend Americans, while violence tends to get a pass) was when a patron complained about seeing a sex scene in Ariel Schrag’s Likewise. I know my library also faced complaints about Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For and Fun Home collections as well. (If you’re familiar with those works, you may see a pattern in what specifically offends some patrons).

Ever since then, I lived in fear of a parent flipping through a copy of Ivan Brunetti’s Misery Loves Comedy, and finding myself in the position of having to explain why, say, the comic strip with the nun who has two penises, the Catholic school boys, the pope and the bishop belongs on the shelf of a public library. That fear was eventually lifted when the book was discarded from the collection due to low circulation—whew!

Anyway, give the New York Times piece a read and a think if you get a chance today.

Why is the subject even worth a think for comics fans? Well, libraries have been a huge factor in the construction of the comics Golden Age we’re living in right now, and it’s hard to overestimate the role librarians have had in certain aspects of it, like turning Bone into a monster all-ages hit, promoting manga, sending Neil Gaiman prose fans into his comics work and the creation of the ever-growing field of original graphic novels aimed at kids.

Additionally, the big, direct market publishers’ moves away from comic books and toward graphic novels means that more and more of the stuff you used to have to buy at a local comic shop will be available for free at the library, if you don’t mind trade-waiting. I’ve certainly made greater and greater use of my local libraries as the cost of comics have risen and companies have, over the course of this decade, begun collecting almost every single new comic they publish into a bookstore/library-friendly trade paperback format.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.