What's the problem?

I think I shared at the beginning of this course, that even though my husband, sons and to a lesser degree my daughter, love comics and are especially drawn to superheroes and the films that have been created in the last few years I was not interested in them. I knew, that at the library where I was working there was a solid base of kids who are anime/manga devotees, but I didn’t really see why we might need to add to the collection, other than in that specific and limited genre.

Now I do.

I think my initial disinterest in comics and graphic novels really stemmed from an aversion to the sexualized drawings. My inner stereotype of images of " women in comics" made me uncomfortable with the idea of purchasing and shelving these books and disinterested in reading them myself. This raised two issues for me:

One, revolves around censorship and informed selection policies. Who was I buying books for (high school library, personal interest/collection)? Knowing my audience, and forcing myself to learn more about comics by immersion in the genre helped me get past my resistance and able to learn more about the huge variety of genres represented today in comics and graphic novels.

Two, the power of images.I think I am very much a product of my prudish North American culture (born in the late 1950s). I have mentioned this in our discussions---I frequently find the images overwhelming. The blood and gore in the heroic epics like 300, or the depictions of animals dying in Pride of Baghdad are too much for me, too.

I don’t think most younger people react that way, and that has got to be part of the appeal. In a TV/Movie/Computer screen world the ability to read IMAGES is required. The ability to distance oneself from the images is also required.

I think part of what I’m struggling with is the fact that if middle-aged women are in charge of purchasing the graphic novels for their libraries, if they have similar reactions to mine, and are similarly uninformed, they probably aren’t buying too many!

One of the biggest issues when it comes to graphic novels
is that of explicit material. Certain genres such as horror, the
supernatural, crime and punishment, satire and dark humour will

be identified as being more likely to cause upset amongst readers
or their parents/guardians, due to content. (Gorman, 8/1/2002)
At the Emanuel School, the staff were confronted with this problem
after purchasing the first set of graphic novels that included titles
by the author, Clive Barker. The library already had copies of
books by this author – both the “Weaveworld” and the “Books
of Blood” series, which contain explicit language and sexual
references. However, the inclusion of the graphic novels of this
author was deemed inappropriate for our school library because
the sexual content and violence were presented in picture formats,
thus impacting in a different way. It is interesting to note that
other books with similar content such as “Vernon God Little” are
considered acceptable, but graphic novels on similar topics may
not be simply because it is not just text, but images. Censoring
such material depends on many variables including audience,
location, cultural and religious considerations and so on.
With particular reference to Manga titles, again, it is extremely
important to view the collection. Browsing a collection of Manga
will confront you with graphic images of violence and sexuality
and in some cases mild pornographic material. Titles such as
“Fair Skinned Beauty”, “Hot Tales” or “Immoral Angel” all have
warnings indicating that they contain extreme sexual situations.
You will have these same titles in the catalogue or collection, as
you will "Astro Boy" (Lee)

I did some polling of the Teacher-Librarians in my school district---only one is interested in graphic novels.( She lived in Japan for a while and became a fan of manga then). The others have some in their collections, but they depend on reviews and recommendations for their purchases. It is a similar story with other teachers. Most say they don't have time/interest to learn about comics and graphic novels. One of my purposes in writing this assignment is gathering my resources together so I can do a little proselytizing! I am now convinced that I'll read more graphic novels for personal pleasure and I want to use them in my teaching practice.

To address this concern, I returned many times to The ABCs of Graphic Novels (Gail de Vos, 2005). Her recommendation is to recognize that this is a relatively new, non-standardized medium, so it is important to find material that is appropriate for the intended audience. Format information is not enough. Just describing something as a Graphic Novel or Comic book really doesn’t do it.