...and any graphic novel you like, too, of course :)

Warren Ellis in the lead! :)

... which happened just by chance, because I got Switchblade Honey for the art by Brandon McKinney. I first found him via his Elfquest work, and I love his art. :)

Great group, and great site.
I just wish Libraything was more comics-friendly, so we could add more information about the comics, the writers and the story arcs.
But there's hope, right?!

The two biggest improvements LT could make for comics (both of which are in the works, I think): support multiple 'creators', so artists could be accomodated, and support 'series'.

I don't enter single issues, partly because they don't have ISBNs and partly because it would clutter up the listings. But it does feel weird to get 'recommendations' for TBPs when I have the single issues.

Actually, five of my top ten "special sauce" recommendations are for books I already have, but which are misattributed in other people's catalogs: this, this, this, this, and this. It would be nice to get those cleaned up, too.

I've thought about adding the TBPs on LibraryThing if I already have all the issues therein. Is this a good idea or should I hold out for some of the deeper cataloging improvements? Thoughts?

Not a bad idea if you want to keep track of it, sure, adding the TPBs with the issues, of course the only problem with that is a lot of them don't exist.

Seem we prefer Watchmen by Dave Gibbons as compared to Watchmen by Alan Moore on that front. :)

Eh, well, the series with most issues I have is One Piece, with 40 books so far, and all of those have an ISBN on their own. In addition to that I think Librarything is most useful for keeping track of which issues of a series I have, and which not, so, yeah, I'm entering single issues.

I do wish there was an option to conflate series, though.

Better author/creator handling is at least planned :)

That's something I'm confused about... What exactly *is* a graphic novel?

Is it just page count - is a book with more than X pages a graphic novel, even though it collects stories that are not (or only loosely) connected?

Does it need to be self-contained, so if it's an ongoing story, like many manga series, it's not a graphic novel?

What do you think?

RE: Watchmen-actually i have it by Alan Moore in my library, but its coming up that i have it by Dave Gibbons in the group zeitgeist!

I generally think of graphic novel as the 'posh' term for anything in the comic genre that's been published in book format. Page count has little to do with it, and an on-going series I suppose counts as a novel in the same way that seperate volumes of things like Dance to the Music of time do. Perhaps we could take to calling collections of stand alone issues like Sandman's Dream Country something along the lines of Graphic shorts.

Even with the improvements they promised to make in the creators fields, Librarything as it is isn't the best online catalog for issues, because the information would never be as complete as with other programs, say, comics collectorz. But maybe in the future they may add more features that would allow this.
I'd love to be able to add all of my issues to LT - the tags would certainly come in handy, because this is certainly the best online catalog design I've seen so far.

Strictly speaking, a 'graphic novel' is a comic book that gets its first publication in book form, and is significantly lengthlier than your average monthly comic (100+ pages, say, as opposed to 20-odd pages). By this token, Watchmen isn't a graphic novel, while Warren Ellis' Orbiter certainly is (the former was originally published monthly, the latter has only been published in book form).

However, the term has come to apply to all comic books published in collected form, possibly influenced by people who wanted to make their hobby sound more grown-up. After all, comic books are for kids, whereas graphic novels are for grown-ups, right? :)

At any rate, my rule of thumb is if it has a spine (and you can buy it in a bookshop), it's a graphic novel. 99% of the time it'll also have an ISBN, but I do have some graphic novels (Stray Bullets, namely) that don't have one.

I'm sidestepping the thorny issue of manga, where one could potentially consider a volume of manga as being a single 'issue', and therefore all the volumes of, say, One Piece, should be combined into a single work. :) Though my personal take is that each volume is a separate work, on account of they fulfill the spine/ISBN/bookshop criteria as outlined above.

Oh, and it doesn't have to be self-contained, and a single graphic novel can collect different, unconnected stories - see the DC Showcase or Marvel Essentials books, for example. Or for a specific example, "Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale", a Catwoman book published to coincide with the movie that collected a number of different Catwoman comics.

These days, bookstores call any TPB a 'graphic novel', of course, but even the writers themselves get pretty queasy about making the distinction, so I tagged everything "comics."

But I personally find the traditional (text-only) definitions useful: a novel requires that by the end the protagonist has gone through some irrevocable internal change. If it's just a series of adventures/episodes, it's called a picaresque. If it's just a single adventure, it's a short story.

So From Hell, Sandman, Cerebus, Transmetropolitan, and Preacher are all graphic novels, even though they may have self-contained stories (called 'set pieces' when found in text novels) and even though they appeared first in single issues. Endless Nights isn't, it's a collection of (wonderful) short stories. I suppose Church and State counts as a novella, though Dave Sim is right to call Melmoth a 'short story'.

It's significant that in many of the first books that got the label 'graphic novel' ('A Contract with God', 'Watchmen', 'Sandman') the protagonist dies at the end. Really dies, so that 'resurrecting' them later (as with traditional comic book characters) would seem ridiculous.

Oh, I tag them all as 'comics' myself too, as calling everything 'graphic novels' doesn't work for me. Though I wouldn't be overly critical of those who do call them graphic novels. It's not worth having too many arguments about in the long run, really.

I don't go quite as far as differing between them by calling them novels, or picaresques, or short stories, though. A comic is a comic is a comic, that'll do me.

I'm curious about the works you cite as being 'graphic novels', though. Specifically because, of those, From Hell is the only one that is contained in a single volume. With the others, are you saying that, to take one example, *all* the volumes of Preacher taken together are a single graphic novel? I wouldn't say that all the works of Preacher from Preacher: Gone to Texas through to Preacher: Alamo are a single novel any more than the Gormenghast trilogy, or the Hitchhikers Guide books can be considered single novels.

I don't think that the death of the protagonist is a significant thing with early graphic novels myself. I'd say that the more important factor would be the generally more 'adult' tone that they had, be it leading to a death-filled ending or not.

bluetyson: Yeah, I get what you mean. I would be adding the graphic novel versions of single issues more for the social data than for cataloging purposes. I'm still wrapping my head around how to track my thousands of issues.

I took a look at Comics Collectorz, but I'd be more inclined towards something web-based. Any suggestions?

For web based, there is comicbookdb.com.

I put mine in there (the non-trades/graphic novels/essentials) and then used that list for reference for LT.

Well, yeah, a graphic novel is a comic... I guess I see the parallel as "comic" corresponds to "prose", "graphic novel" might correspond to "novel"... "series" corresponds to "penny dreadful" ;)

Holden: Many books we think of as one-volume novels were originally issued as serials, and then collected at the end of the run in multi-volume sets, and only in the 20th century issued as brick-like thousand-pagers. (I'm currently reading one of them: Anna Karenina).

Haven't read Gormenghast, but Arthur Dent has no overarching story in H2G2 the way the protagonists of Preacher and Sandman do. Sure, Preacher has digressions, but many text novels have long digressions, such as the Grand Inquisitor episode of the Brothers Karamazov, or the many chapters on Tolstoy's theories of history in War and Peace.

That doesn't mean Preacher is as good as these others, just that it read to me like one big story. (I only read it in the trades, and over a fairly short period of time, which probably made a difference.)

My only problem with comicbookdb is the fact that they don't allow anyone else to see your books. I wanted an online catalog that my friends can see, kinda of like this one.

Maybe a better program will come along, I'd sure love it to be able to see exactlyow many issues and storylines I have

I thought comicboodb had an option to be public? At least from memory, I don't think I turned it on.

HoldenCarver: actually, you forget that manga volumes are actually collections of installments originally published in monthly "phone book" magazines like Shonen Jump and Coro Coro. Not at all different from comic TPB collections. Not thorny, I'd say.

lampbane: no, I didn't forget that. The difference is that with American comics, they are, for the most part, written with the collected editions firmly in mind - at least in recent years. That is, the writer will pen a six-issue 'arc', say, which can then be packaged up into a single TPB later down the line where the reader can get a story with a beginning and an ending, even if it's only one story in a whole series of paperbacks.

Manga volumes, on the other hand, don't have these defined arcs - or at least, not in my experience. Frequently I'll finish reading a volume and it will have ended right in the middle of a story, on a cliffhanger. This, I gather, is because the volumes are published pretty much by page-count alone (have we got enough chapters to fill a volume? right, stick one out!) rather than by trying to package collections so that if someone starts in the middle, they don't feel totally lost at sea. That, to me, is what makes them a tricker proposition.

grunin: I'm aware that writers of the past wrote in serial form - most famously, Dickens (at least in my part of the world).

You seem to have sidestepped my question somewhat, though. To restate. Preacher is published in nine graphic novels. Do you consider that to be nine works or one? Your message further above implies the latter, and I'm wondering that is correct, or a 'radical interpretation of the text'.

Better examples of books containing a 'single' story across multiple volumes may be the Dragonlance Chronicles, or other fantasy books like Eddings' Belgariad, Mallorean or Tamuli books. Or how about the Wheel of Time books? :)

Since "the novel" is an idea, not a specific work, what we're really talking about is to what extent these various works exemplify that form. Given that premise, I'll stick my neck out and say that Preacher, taken as a single narrative, is at least as close to that 'ideal' form as, say, Cryptonomicon.

I don't think this is radical at all -- I'm very skeptical of imposed interpretations myself. (See the Sandman Papers for an example or two of such.) But the series sticks to the basic ideas: one main character with a clearly defined goal, which in this case he fulfills at the end. A handful of others introduced early on, who help or hinder, and whose narratives are themselves given closure. Most digressions eventually tie into the main stories, etc.

I suppose we can ask Ennis himself about this; and of course my main point doesn't depend on Preacher. I haven't read much manga, but Tezuka's Buddha is certainly one big novel. No?

You could raise the same question about Mike Carey's Lucifer, which is winding up now. It certainly feels like Elaine's story has had a true beginning-middle-end, but Lucifer's doesn't: after all these years he hasn't really changed, which I suppose is why certain stretches felt arbitrary.

Well, Dragon Ball definitely has its "sagas", while Fullmetal Alchemist can be broken up into phases as well. The shorter manga works are usually the ones where the entirety is one story, but longer works usually wrap up plot arcs in a few volumes. Of course, that just complicates cataloguing them should you choose to regard a "novel" as a completed story arc and the volumes are split between two...

It seems clear from the comments so far that the category "graphic novel" is, at best, a fuzzy one with the potential for a lot of skirmishing along the borders. The proliferation of the term as a marketing ploy to legitimize comics collections doesn't help.

My personal threshold, for the purpose of tagging in LT, is whether the volume in question involves some kind of coherent and self-contained narrative, or is just a collection of episodes. Thus, I've tagged the Seed of Destruction, Wake the Devil, and Conqueror Worm volumes of the Hellboy series as graphic novels, but not The Chained Coffin and Others or The Right Hand of Doom (which are more like collections of "short stories").

As another example, you could make the case that Grant Morrison's run of Doom Patrol comprises a graphic novel (and I'd be willing to agree), but I can't bring myself to call Crawling from the Wreckage one because it consists of two short-ish story arcs and a stand-alone story.

Like most semantic debates, this kind of thing leads quickly to splitting some pretty fine hairs, but I don't think it's entirely worthless. It could lead us to a fuller understanding of the variety of shapes and sizes of plot arcs comics series employ, for one thing.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

donutage: I completely agree.

But now I have a question for the group: what single-issue series do you buy every month? I'm looking for recommendations because I've almost run out.

The only books I follow currently where I really can't wait until the next issue are Powers (Bendis) and Fell (Ellis). I'm interested to see where Marvel's 'Civil War' goes, but not their other books.

I keep up with Gaiman (Eternals), Morrison (All-Star Superman), and Vaughan (Ex Machina, Y: The Last Man), but none of those are really exciting these days. I pick up a few more each week that aren't worth listing. (I just gave up on Fraction's 'Casanova', alas.)

So: any suggestions?

Sadly, I no longer buy single-issue comics every month. This due to a combination of factors; lack of time to make it to the shop, lack of room to store them all, and lack of excitement about what was coming out. When I realised that nearly everything I was buying was turning up in TPBs, and the ones which weren't I didn't actually care about, it made dropping them all a no-brainer.

In there's one which I miss getting the singles of most, however, it would be Eric Powell's "The Goon". Very funny, lovely art. And well supported in TPBs, so I'll be getting it that way in future. But you could always give it a try anyway. :)

My hold list:
Gaiman's Eternals
Peter David's Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Fallen Angel, and X-Factor

I use both the 'Graphic Novel' and "Comics" tag. Most get both. But, for example, Comics Poetry, put out by NBM, aren't "Graphic Novels". I just can't convince myself to tag poetry with the word 'novel.'

There is a "Multiple Authors" spot on the book info page. One could add an artist there, and put (Artist) in parenthesis. Or one could put it in the comments.

Sure; any graphic novel is a comic, too, so any graphic novel gets both tags.

I get the impression there are some people who have prejudices against one format or genre ("comics/fantasy are/is stupid"), and when they come across something of it they like, instead of admitting "OK, it CAN be good" they go "Oh, this can't be a comic, because it's not stupid - it's a graphic novel" or "Discworld is not fantasy, it's satire"...

I think this attitude is bloody stupid.

Holden, me too.

When they hit 6 bucks, that was it for me. Well, I make an exception for Planetary :) When you are over 50% of the price of a novel imported from somewhere like Powell's, and second hand ones can be had for 2-5, that is just silly.

Anke, you are right, people like what they like. Some of the same people would get upset if you said why the hell would I want to read about ordinary people doing ordinary boring things every day, badly.? :)

Or even worse, people from 200 years ago doing the same thing. ;-)

Or those who refuse to categorize 1984, Brave New World, Mr. Sammler's Planet, or any of Kurt Vonnegut's novels as Science Fiction.

Discworld is satirical fantasy.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is satircal science fiction

My biggest problem with the term 'comics' is that there are a lot of comics that aren't comical. Historically, it is a term that got assigned to the genre, because a lot (most?) of the genre was meant to be funny. But even in the early years, the "war comics" certainly weren't comical.

"Graphic novels" is more accurate, and more inclusive.

gavroche: "there are a lot of comics that aren't comical"

There are a lot of Novels that aren't novel, and a lot of Films that aren't made of film, and a lot of Albums that aren't albums, and so forth.

The usage of the word 'novel' to mean 'new' is becoming obscure. The usage of the word 'comic' to mean humorous is still probably the number one meaning.

The word 'album', if you compare all its definitions, seems to derive from an idea of a collection. Whether it is a collection of songs or photographs - regardless of how the collection is put together. So while phonograph albums are disappearing. CD albums are equally entitled to the word.

If you were referring to albums which contain only one item...the argument may apply. I'd agree that a CD that contained only one song shouldn't be called an album. It's a 'single'.

There are a lot of examples like 'film' where technology is changing its meaning. However, as my original comment stated, 'comic' was never accurate, as there were some seriously un-funny comics back in the early days. It's probably too late to change it now -- I agree -- but that doesn't make it any less inaccurate.

gavroche: Of course I agree that it feels wrong to call From Hell a comic.

So let's take the tough case: what do we call Power Girl (JSA)? It's a collection of stories featuring the Power Girl character from representative points in her DC career. The stories are not comic, but none are longer than a few issues, so that knocks out both 'comic' and 'novel'.

It's a collection of...something. But what?

gavroche: I forgot to mention...

In the early days of 78s, records were sold as single discs, even for classical works running longer than two sides. Then they created bound multi-sleeve albums -- strictly analogous to the existing uses of the term -- to hold multiple discs. I'm not sure what portion of sales were of albums rather than 4.5-minute (per side) single discs, aka 'singles'. (In case you're wondering: yes, this is why pop songs are still typically 4.5 minutes or less.)

Ever since, the obsolete terminology has remained with us: 45s and 3-song CDs are 'singles', LPs and CDs containing 8 or more songs are 'albums', and so forth. (In-between things got a new name in the early 80s: "EPs")

I have two guidelines for cataloguing comics that aren't necessarily graphic novels.

1) If the book is perfect bound, like DC's Prestige format, I will catalogue it regardless of whether it has an ISBN or not. It has a spine with a title on it, so it resides on my bookcase, rather than in a storage box. Examples: Mythos: The Final Tour, Totems, The Prisoner Book 1: a(r)rival, or Cthulhu Tales.

2) If the book has an ISBN, I will catalogue it regardless of binding. I tag regular stapled comics as "chapbooks" for these purposes. Examples: Fillerbunny, published by Slave Labor Graphics, or Free Fall, published by Narwain.

Any other examples I should keep my eyes open for?

Message edited by its author, Aug 11, 2006, 10:49am.

I just enter all of them...
Entering saddle stitched comics only when they have an ISBN seems very arbitrary to me.
There are also a fewnow out of print series I'd like to complete one day, and I think Librarything is very useful for keeping track of which issues I have, and which not.

I think with very few exceptions I'll try to stick with paperback collections in future, anyway.

For what it's worth, Scott McCloud uses the term "sequential art" (borrowed from Will Eisner, I think) to describe the whole field (which, of course, for him stretches back to Lascaux), but sticks to "comics" for the titles of his two "theoretical" works.

I don't know, entering all of my comics here seems a little overwhelming. I mean, do you consider each issue a "work", or is each storyline really the "work"? Does using "could it be bound into a graphic novel collection?" work as a litmus test?

If we all entered all of our comics collections here we would probably overwhelm Librarything entirely. This is why I'm very hesitant to start cataloguing them here, when there are other comics database services out there that are better suited to the task.

Both the Collectorz program and comicbookdb.com look great. I've started cataloguing stuff on the web-based one already, but I'm seriously considering dropping the $40 for Collectorz.

Comics are just another kind of books, I don't see why I should list them not with my books, especially considering some of them have ISBNs.

Death Comes to Dillinger (1 of 2) has an ISBN, but as far as I can tell Edgar Allan Poe's Haunt of Horror (1 of 3) doesn't. Print and paper quality seem comparable - why should I not enter both?

My collection of single issues isn't that big, since I collect only very few titles. I guess I could really inflate it if I entered the old Mickey Mouse and similar stuff I stored in the attic, but I'm not completely insane XD

I think someone on here mentioned they have 58,000 comics (on LT, that is) that'll be fun, if they ever enter those. :) Same person had 20,000 odd books, too. Big house, I presume!

There is no way I could enter all of my single issue comics, it would take forever and I would have to drag them all out, but then again I could reread them all. Actually I am to lazy........
So if it doesn't have an ISBN or doesn't give me the "book" vibe I don't enter it.

Ah! I hadn't realized Death Comes to Dillinger has an ISBN. I don't think I'll really know how many of my comics have that (admittedly arbitrary) distinction of having ISBN numbers, but I don't think I'll find out until after I can catalogue them all somewhere else. It's a herculean task not likely to occur until after I move in a month anyway...

Does anyone own comics relating to the Lewis and Clark Expedition?
I have four titles.

For the purposes of LibraryThing I'm calling all sequential art "comics" - and that includes, for now, Original Graphic Novels, Collected Trade Paperbacks, Comic Strip Collections and even Manga. I figure the tags are for my convenience, and the only distinction I want to make is between traditional prose and sequential art.

To keep my shelf from getting too cluttered to browse effectively, I only enter the first volume of a series. In a few cases I listed a trade even though what I actually have is the single issues. I refuse to list each volume of, say, Sandman individually, even though I have all of the trades and all of the single issues as well. (In that case I'm ridiculous, usually I only have one or the other).

I tend to regard each series as a "work" encompassing all of the individual volumes. I suppose that would make less sense if you follow series which rotate through artists and writers, which I don't.

I actually do the same thing for the prose books as well, anytime there's more than two books in a series. It would be nice if LT allowed you to list an entire series as one entry and somehow check off which parts you own if you want to do that.

Message edited by its author, Aug 17, 2006, 1:27pm.

Interesting point about the clutter factor. I don't enter single issues, but I didn't think of it as 'clutter', I thought it would distort the basic 'feel' of the catalog; maybe you're closer to the mark.

When you have enough books, you start to have the kind of searching problems characteristic of the Net in general.

I know if I entered all of my single issues it would seriously distort the feel of my catalog. I would have 3 times as many comics as I do anything else, and it would be next to impossible to browse through.

But 24 pages of sequential art is not equivalent to a 1500 page novel by a 19th century French poet. Or even a 300 page novel about a restaurant at the end of the universe. (I take what my tag statistics say about me so seriously I already have a defensive comment about it in my profile)

I've entered a handful of trades, that's it.

It would be nice if LT allowed you to list an entire series as one entry and somehow check off which parts you own if you want to do that.

Hell, yes!

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is more like 160 pages, from memory, it is pretty thin. ;-)

You mean you are scared about what your non listed trades say about you?

:)

Restaurant at the End of the Univerase, according to Amazon, is 256 pp. I'll claim I rounded up.

If I entered all my single issues my Comics tag would be above 3000, and my next highest tag would be somewhere around 100. That's not an accurate representation of the 'feel' of my library.

If we say 6 single issues = 1 trade, that would be equivalent to 500 trades. This might be more accurate for my library, but not representative for me, since most were given to me by a friend who was moving in exchange for some web develpment work. It's been lots of fun reading these, but they're not me. Not all of them at least.

I've entered *my* trades. And following lizvelrene's suggestion, I've added some other trades when what I have are the single issues.

If I was willing to admit to having 1408074
little can embarass me, right? I just want my library to be an accurate representation of who I am.

On the other topic: I like the term 'sequential art'

Playboy were rightly noted for some good interviews and articles, apart from the women, weren't they? That wouldn't embarrass me.

Still having an issue of Youngblood might though, I bought one of those K-Mart or somewhere three for one cheap bagged deals, and got one of those in it. :)

That edition might have that many pages, must be big print or spaced or something, the one I was thinking of, was the first one, which was on my shelf , for example http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDeta...

Is it a bit longer though, 180 or so.

If you have 3000 comics, and you are reading and liking them, a fair chance that such a fact suggests you are, indeed, a comic geek. ;-)

brilliant, brilliant idea (thirded/seconded whatever)

I've taken a new tack. I don't enter single issues, but if a TPB appears and I have all the singles I enter the trade and tag it "singles."

>53 Yeah gavroche, you´re right. The library should show something of you.
>56 Nice idea grunin! :=)

I for my part tag all comics or graphic novels as comics altogether, mangas as mangas and manhuas as manhuas.
OK not very accurate but most of the time I add a second or more tags to describe the "book" properly.
If I think it necessary. This gives me the freedom to decide for my own if I want something called a graphic novel or comic.

Message edited by its author, Apr 3, 2007, 1:52pm.

Now that my long-awaited comics have arrived, a full 50% of them have fallen apart. One is a DC comics and the other Random House. I've read reviews on Amazon about books coming apart. Why are they made so shoddily? I haven't had my "regular" paperbacks fall apart at this rate. I will buy the hardbacks from now on. Sigh.

Why is Jar of Fools titled "Jar of Fools"? I didn't come across this reference nor have I ever heard it before. Is it an adage?

I just got a shipment meself of new books, but nothing fallen apart yet. Will let you know.

Ah, comics. Yay!

Then again, think it might be Amazon's fault? I've haven't had a comics TPB fall apart ever.

Hello

I have a question that is nearly driving me nuts.
A fellow LTer placed a request on my site and I don´t know how I shoudt handel the problem.
The following is his request:

>You have a lot of books of Valerian und Veronique and mentioning as author: Jean-Claude Mezieres.
However, the author was Pierre Christin and the drawings were from Jean-Claude Mezieres.
Is it possible that you will change this in: "Christin & J.-C. Mezieres, P." .
When you will do so, their books can be combined. It isn't possible now, because other books are mentioned already under: Pierre Christin and we can not combine: Christin and Mezieres.

Comics TPBs don't always have the best quality bindings, I find. I'm not sure if they've got better these days or if I'm just better at treating them with care, but I've had no problem with my recent (say, last three years?) of DC TPBs. Not sure if I have any Random House ones, but as a 'proper' I'd have expected them to last longer.

Old Image TPBs were notorious for falling apart - the Spawn ones, for exampe - because they used what seemed to be a most substandard glue in the binding. I still laugh when I think of the time I picked up a copy of one Spawn book and all the pages promptly fell out (it wasn't mine).

My number one tip for making comics TPBs last would be this - don't crack the binding. I know it can be tempting sometimes, especially when the printing goes right up to the edge of the page so you want to see the whole picture, but it really isn't worth it. (Not that I'm presuming anyone's done this, but I thought I'd chuck it out there anyway.)

I don't have at all many hardcovers, so I can't say if their binding is better in that regard.

#62: I always list my graphic novels under the name of the writer, and put the artist in the "other authors" box.

Of course, it really comes down to personal preference, and if you think that the artist was heavily involved in plotting/scripting and whatnot, it might be better to put them first.

If in doubt, the person first credited on the cover/title page goes in as the primary author.

How and where can I buy comics in their original French (Eplileptic, for instance)? lolawalser, can you give me a link?

HI, I left you a message. Briefly, I'd look at Amazon Canada first, then Amazon France. Amazon Canada has a large stock of comics in French, it's worthwhile checking them out first (for the North Americans).

Message edited by its author, May 28, 2007, 2:56pm.

Hi, I'll be doing a full color center spread comic strip for the "Washington Post Book World" magazine. It will publish sometime after the Fourth of July.

I submitted a black and white piece, titled, "Against Forgetting," and the editor, Marie Arana (author of American Chica requested a full color piece, which I am thrilled to do.

The "Washington Post Book World" invites authors to write on the topic of their "writing life," and I asked if I could do it as a comic strip instead. The answer was Yes. They've not done this format before.

My writing life began after the Tiananmen Massacre when I saw friends silenced by the Communist regime and so this strip will reflect that experience.

I was goofing around on my website late last night. Finally figured out how to create a slide show of my art on the index page. It may take a few days for you to see it, so if you don't see it, please check back. Visit www.belleyang.com

Message edited by its author, Jun 5, 2007, 5:29pm.

I'll be doing a full color center spread comic strip for the "Washington Post Book World" magazine. It will publish sometime after the Fourth of July.

That's wonderfull, Belle, congratulations! I hope it will be visible online if I can't find the Wash Post here.

Have you seen the series of strips Satrapi did for NY Times Op-Ed section? (I forget if that was last year or "several months" ago...)

Thank you, Lola--It publishes on July 15th and I'll let you know once I find out whether it will be available online. I'm not sure how happy I will be with the color since b&w would look better in a newspaper and I am also tightening up because it's the second try when you lose a bit of the adrenaline.

>68--No, I missed Satrapi in the NY Times. I didn't know what a graphic novel was or who Satrapi was until November of 2006. I was recruited by an editor at WWNorton to try my hands at comics so I've been studying hard--actually it's been so much fun reading up, I can't believe it's my work.