Durham County Library


Having trouble viewing this newsletter? Click Here
Graphic Novels & Comics - November 2013
Greetings!
My name is Patrick, and I work in the North Carolina Collection at the Main Library. I'm also a lifelong reader of comics and graphic novels.  Check out the contents of this month's newsletter in the box to the right.  I hope you find these recommendations worthwhile, and please email me if you have any thoughts or questions. Thanks and enjoy!
New @ Durham County Library
Gunnerkrigg Court Vol. 4: Materia - Tom Siddell
Publisher: Archaia Entertainment
 Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 07/30/2013
 ISBN-13: 9781936393992
 ISBN-10: 1936393999
The Onion's non-satirical branch, AV Club, calls Gunnerkrigg Court
"A pleasure—a low-key gothic fantasy that’s tonally along the lines of Ted Naifeh’s Courtney Crumrin books, but focused more on a central friendship and a complicated community than a single character, and with lavishly colors and rich design instead of stark blacks and whites." In this newest volume, Annie continues to develop her powers and even takes part in a class full of former-fairies and animals, while Kat uncovers the mysteries of the ancient Court robots.  Lost?  Start at volume 1!
A Matter of Life - Jeffrey Brown
Publisher: Diamond Comic Distributors
 Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 07/02/2013
 ISBN-13: 9781603092661
 ISBN-10: 1603092668
Jeffrey Brown's latest collection of autobiographical stories shifts focus across three generations to examine his father, himself, and his son Oscar. Although topics range in seriousness from camping trip escapades to puberty woes to confronting the death of a loved one, the major theme of the book is the initial presence and subsequent absence of Christian religion in Brown's life.  As a loss-of-faith story, it's a good companion to Craig Thompson's Blankets (which is a sort of dramatized autobiographical story, hence its place on the graphic fiction shelves), with the two books serving as opposite ends -- even in art styles -- of the raw-to-processed spectrum of memoir.
Sand castle - Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters
Publisher: SelfMadeHero
 Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 05/07/2013
 ISBN-13: 9781906838386
 ISBN-10: 1906838380

A dozen vacationers arrive on a secluded French beach to find a pleasant day and uncannily still waters but also an unexplained corpse. Accusations and speculations fly among the visitors as, unbeknownst to them, a larger situation slowly emerges that will ultimately envelope them all in its inevitable embrace. With believable characters and beautifully balanced art, Sandcastle is a haunting book that deserves multiple readings and highest recommendations.

Dial H: Into You - China Miéville, Mateus Santolouco, Riccardo Burchielli and David Lapham
Publisher: DC Comics
 Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/23/2013
 ISBN-13: 9781401237752
 ISBN-10: 1401237754
Cory Doctorow (yes, that Cory Doctorow), writes about Dial H by China Mieville (yes, that China Mieville) at BoingBoing that Mieville's "prodigious imagination and wicked sense of humor are on fine display in the first collection... Mieville doesn't apologize for the fundamental absurdity of the premise. Instead, he turns it up to 11. And then he turns it up to 12... The hero is a morbidly obese ex-boxer in a ruined crime-town who discovers his dial attached to the town's last working payphone. By dialling it, he becomes a series of ever-weirder heroes, from Boy Chimney (a Dickensian goblin with a top hat that stretches to infinity who can strangle his opponents on thick, choking smoke) to Control-Alt-Delete (a CRT-headed underwear pervert who can reset reality to default) to Iron Snail (a roided out action hero who drags along an enormous, slime-squirting shell)... It's glorious stuff, bathos at its best as the humor of the various super-guises is juxtaposed on all the ponderous, unapologetic Lovecrafting bibble-babble."
Comics with Female Protagonists
Comics and graphic novels are often seen as a "boys' club"; thankfully that's less and less true, as you'll see if you visit any of the local comic shops or the comics and manga shelves at mainstream book stores.  The content, unfortunately, still lags behind when it comes to female protagonists in comics, a fact also painfully obvious to any comic or bookshop visitor.  Still, things are (slowly) looking up, as evidenced by many, though not all, of the titles below.
Female superheroes 
Women in contemporary realistic fiction 
Women in other fiction genres 
Events
GRAPHIC BOOK CLUB!
Saturday, November 2
2:00 - 3:30 p.m.
Main Library
3rd Floor Conference Room
 
Bring a graphic novel or comic you've read recently and we’ll talk about what we’ve read, and why they’re awesome. This month: stories with female protagonists. Check out the recommendations at the left, and call 919-560-0125 for more information.
 
For more comics-related events in the Triangle, visit the Triangle Comics Link!
If you are having trouble unsubscribing to this newsletter, please contact the Durham County Library at
919-560-0100, 300 N. Roxoboro Street, Durham, NC 27702
librarywebmaster@durhamcountync.gov

© 2014 EBSCO Publishing, Powered by The Title Source TM