Name Authority & Secret Identities

Superhero comic books bring extra complications with their layers of secret identities that make it difficult to choose the right names and titles to organize records by series records or name subjects. But even if you can only afford to use the simplest form of the names in your catalog records, that doesn't mean the information can't be provided somewhere else.

Wikipedia has very helpful and interesting tidbits about superhero comics characters (and manga, too); why not incorporate it? Linking to outside sources from the catalog can be time-consuming and inconvenient for both staff and patrons when the links break and there is limited time to fix the problem. Perhaps we could create a sidebar or links spot on our webpage for teens? It could be a bonus service addressing the multiple aliases/nomenclature issue as well as offering the nifty character insights (history, powers, etc.) from the Wikipedia pages.

With the Green Lantern "SuperAlias" box on Wikipedia, you can see that one hero has been "played" by many different characters over the past 67 years. Unlike Bruce Wayne, who lives forever, other superheroes do retire or relinquish their positions. Fans following the story of one character may want to sort out the previous stories and figure out allusions. Pointing them directly to Wikipedia would allow you to provide that information without having to have resident experts in your staff or update name authority records when the plots evolve further and characters continue to change.

Description: Shonen, Shōjo, and More

by Beth Snow

Bilingual and cross-cultural collections can represent an added challenge when it comes to genre names and search terms. Japanese comics and animation are good examples. Stopping the search terms with the words "manga" or "anime" can have the same effect as not going past the word "fiction" to describe the entire spectrum of novels. In addition, a good portion of our target audience is tuned into the Japanese terms for genres of manga.

To that end, I recommend we incorporate these terms into the cataloging/search descriptors for our collection. The Wikipedia article on manga offers excellent background about the form, but it's definitions are a bit messy. This link on a website devoted to explaining manga and anime to librarians does a more concise job of introducing the terms.

Publishers

by Emily Barney and Maura McKee

Besides needing to be aware of major sources for collection development purposes, it's important to understand the "structure" behind comic book series, because many readers will. Publishers, especially for comic book titles, should be an easy field you can use in the catalog to search and retrieve lists of similar items.

Many of these materials are published by a short list of major distributors. If you're not familiar with comic books, you will find very useful information organized about them under the Wikipedia Category for US Comic book publishing companies, especially the DC or Marvel sections. See our Websites post for more examples of Wikipedia pages by genre.

Since many fans will follow characters across many titles within these publishers - and perhaps refer to them as fictional "worlds," like "Superman is in the DC Universe," it's a good idea to have a general understanding, especially for superhero comic books, which characters are published by which groups.

These lists are by no means comprehensive, but they'll give you a good start.

• Major Comic Book Publishers
  
• DC - http://www.dccomics.com/
• Vertigo - http://www.dccomics.com/vertigo/
• Wildstorm - http://www.dccomics.com/wildstorm/
• Marvel - http://www.marvelcomics.com/
• Image Comics - http://www.imagecomics.com/
  
• Dark Horse - http://www.darkhorse.com/
  

• Major Graphic Novel Publishers
  
• Fantagraphics - http://www.fantagraphics.com/
• Drawn & Quarterly - http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/index.php
• Top Shelf Productions - http://www.topshelfcomix.com/

• Major Manga Publishers -
  
• TokyoPop - http://www.tokyopop.com/
  
• Viz Media - http://www.viz.com/
  
• for more, see the list of Manga Distributors in English on Wikipedia here

• Major Comics/Cartoons Publishers - (many mainstream publishers as well)
  
• Fantagraphics - http://www.fantagraphics.com/ (they do graphic novels & comics)
  
• Andrew McMeels - http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/cartoon_books.html
• Archie Comics - http://www.archiecomics.com/
  

Awards

by Maura McKee and Emily Barney

Graphic novels have won awards in many categories, including a Pulitzer Prize for Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, a memoir of his father’s survival of the holocaust.¹ There are also many awards dedicated just to comic books by genre or for achievement in specific fields.

The Hahnl Library's Comic Book Awards Almanac includes a glossary that explains the differences between these awards, from festival awards to nominations, polls and special selection awards.

You can find more information about the different awards on specific pages on Wikipedia including "Comic Book Awards," "Anime and Manga Awards" and "Award-Winning Graphic Novels"

Examples of awards given in this field:

• Eisner Award - FAQ on comic-con international website
  
• Given for creative achievement in American comic books; named in honor of comic book writer and artist Will Eisner

• Harvey Awards - http://www.harveyawards.org/
  
• This series, named after writer artist Harvey Kurtzman, includes awards for achievement in writing, art, humor, letterer, colorist, new talent, etc. with comic books.
  

• Ignatz Awards - http://www.spxpo.com/ignatz.shtml
  
• Named for the character in the classic comic strip Krazy Kat by George Herriman this is a festival prize that recognizes outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning with special prizes in ten different categories.
  

Examples of other award winning graphic novels:

American Born Chinese, a graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang won the 2007 Michael L. Prinz Award for literary excellence in young adult literature. The novel interweaves three different stories:

one is a folk tale of "The Monkey King", another is the story of a second-generation immigrant named Jin Wang, and the third is about Danny, a boy with a Chinese cousin named Chin-Kee. The book's climax merges all of these stories together.

More information about the author and the series is available at:
http://www.humblecomics.com/

Jeff Smith's Bone is the longest-running self-published series so far and has won more awards than any other comic in history. It began with the whimsical adventures of Phone Bone and developed into an intricate world with monsters and dragons waging war against the forest creatures under the leadership of a cow-racing grandmother. It was released between 1991 and 2004, as 55 irregularly-released issues that were printed in 9 individual volumes and eventually gathered into one major volume, pictured here. This series has won 44 awards in America and around the world, including 10 Eisner Awards and 11 Harvey Awards.²

More information about the artist and series is available at http://www.boneville.com/

Harvey Pekar and his wife Joyce Brabner wrote Our Cancer Year as he dealt with the discovery of his lymphoma and its treatment. The book was illustrated by Frank Stark, an award-winning professor of art at the University of Missouri. This volume won the 1995 best graphic album Harvey Award. Pekar had already won the American Book Award in 1987 for his American Splendor series. Pekar's life story -- including how he met and married Joyce Brabner, and how he experienced cancer and its treatment -- was made into an excellent film, American Splendor (2003).³

More information about the author and other graphic novels by him and his wife are available at http://www.harveypekar.com/

Linda Medley's Castle Waiting was in YALSA's 2007 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens, and Booklist's Top 10 Graphic Novels for Youth. It has also won 2 Harvey Awards and 7 Eisner awards, including the 1998 Best New Series Eisner Award. Medley began the series in 1996 and volume one was published in 2006. The series begins with a short retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, but once she has left for her happily ever after the castle becomes a refuge for marginal fairy tale creatures and characters, telling stories of unconventional convents and enterprising uses of the goose who laid the golden egg.

More information about the author and her book is available here: http://www.fantagraphics.com/artist/medley/medley.html

Don Rosa's Life and Times of $crooge McDuck explains how the "richest duck in the world" won his fortune between 1877 and 1947. This historical fiction follows his adventures from Scotland to America and beyond to the African Transvaal, Australia, and the Klondike, encountering figures like Theodore Roosevelt. Published from April 1994 to February 1996, it won the 1995 Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story and the 1995 Comic Buyers Guide Fan Awards for Favorite Comic Book

More information is available about the series on Don Rosa's "The IntroDUCKtion to the Life and Times of $crooge McDuck"

¹ Kakutani, Michiko. "Books of The Times; Rethinking the Holocaust With a Comic Book." New York Times. October 29, 1991
² "The History of BONE & Jeff Smith" http://www.boneville.com/bone/bone-history/
³ Kohn, Martin "Brabner, Joyce and Pekar, Harvey: Our Cancer Year" Literature, Arts & Medicine Database 14 April 2005 http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=383