Today I finally had a chance to talk about comics at the library with a large group of kids. It was great! I love having a job where I get to order comics.

That is good! Getting imaginations sparked and having fun at the same time!

That sounds like fun, DL. Did you get to tell them what a big fan of comics you are yourself? And who your fav superheros are?

I hope you instructed them in the correct way to read comics.

I didn't say much about my personal favorites, but I did talk about how I liked comics. I talked about how glad I was that libraries had them now, unlike when I was their age.

I showed them a variety of the comics we had. There were Essentials for Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, a Batman Showcase volume, Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew comics from PaperCutz, "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories," Scooby Doo (which I admitted I still liked--didn't say anything about posting here under a Daphne avatar), Chuck Dixon's "Vanishers" (which a boy checked out almost immediately after I mentioned what it was about) and "Way of the Rat," Nick Abadzis' "Laika," Amy Kim Ganter's "Sorcerers and Secretaries" (which I loved), and assorted Marvel digests.

That sounds great, DL. You will probably be largely responsible for getting younger kids interested in reading comic books.

Then they'll get a little older and sign up to IMWAN and we'll have some new members here.

Amazing!!! Good for you man!

A good dream. A better reality. Viva the libraries.

Pretty sweet, D.

Did you tell them to keep away from Liefeld? That's an important part of the lesson. =)

Well, I didn't set out our copy of "Heroes Reborn" Captain America, which was donated to us a while back. I'm not supposed to censor stuff, but that doesn't mean I have to go out of my way to promote something I don't believe in!

I remember my hometown library had comics in the 70's. There was a complete run of the Starlin Warlock run. Mom would spend hours browsing the rest of the library, I'd sit and read and re-read those. Ah, to be young.

In the early 70's, comics in my library consisted of:

Jules Pfeiffer's Great Comic Book Heroes



Lupoff and Thompson's All in Color for a Dime



...and a collection of Wash Tubbs stories.



It was a big deal when Stan came out with his origins book and his villains book. My library actually had stories from after the 1940's.

Ours did too, for a time. There was a pile of assorted comics in the children's room. I don't know where they came from or where they eventually went. I would browse those when I was there. I can recall Gold Key ghost story comics (which I was young enough to find scary), Marvel Dracula comics (too scary for me), a really convoluted Batman story involving the Spook, a couple of Charlton war comics like my brother liked, two issues of "Prez" (Yikes! It was so bizarre I still remember it!), and a copy of "Unknown Worlds" or some such with the famous cover of the gorilla holding up a librarian at gunpoint. That one and a couple of the others I found many years later in fifty-cent bins and bought for old times' sake.

As far as comics in the actual collection, all they had was a few reprints of Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" and one or two old DC digests that I guess someone had donated.

When I was a kid, my local library had "Origins" "Son Of Origins" and "Bring On The Bad Guys." Those collections had a HUGE influence on my love of comics, and are probably why I only read Marvel books until I got to college.

Mankato State University had a copy of Seduction of the Innocent. That's about all they had that was
comicrelated. Luckily, though, my Dad had a library at home filled with comics and books about comics.

Oh yeah? Well, when I was a kid... we didn't HAVE a library. Just a bookmobile.

I don't think we had any books on comics in the bookmobile.