Laura Multitasks!

Monday, April 19, 2010

In Which Laura Details Her Knowledge of Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and Manga

I know nothing.

That's it. Nothing.

I am sitting here at my "desk" looking over countless reviews of different graphic novels and the like, and I am confused.

What I need is a dork for hire, which is funny, because I have always classified myself as being a dork, nerd, etc. I shouldn't need a dork for hire. But I do, because in my childhood, the closest I ever came to comic book fandom was a short obsession with Garfield. In elementary school.

It's been that long.

I have a shelf for this sort of material. And lots of that is filled. What I must do is...update what we have, which to me means get rid of Rin Tin Tin, which is French and pretty racist in its uncensored version (we have the censored ones). Also, it is French. And old. And there are no lasers in it, and it is boring.

From there, I am at a loss. Get rid of the racist ages old French comics, replace them with--empty space?

So. Even though I know a knitter from the Midwest does not attract the attention of many graphic novel movers and shakers, I hereby issue a challenge.

Go forth. Create a database for librarians that dumbs this stuff way down for us. Create a core list of works that we ought to have in any good collection, then add to it as new graphic novels are released that you find earthshaking. Then back it up with legitimate critical reviews of each work. That means we can trust you. When you're finished, tell everyone what you have done.

Then we will love you.

Right now, every site set up back in the beginning of our new millennium has been abandoned. Most of them were left to wither before 2005, as their writer/reviewers were snatched up by publications searching for qualified reviewers. So in other words, the people who were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts got paying jobs. Which is great for them, but it doesn't help me all that much.

Sigh.

Complainingly yours,

Laura

P.S. Apparently, "complainingly" is a word, because spell check totally didn't care that I'd used it.

2 comments:

  1. If I were you, I'd contact Nikki at the NMPL, or cruise the ACPL YA catalog... Or other YA library people... Starred reviews?

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's what I've been doing. My issue is that I'm not sure starred reviews are the pop-culture stuff that people want to actually read...But I decided I was being paranoid and I ordered graphic novels with many stars.

    ReplyDelete

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