ALIA Graphic September 2021 Roundup

Welcome to the ALIA Graphic Novels and Comics monthly roundup for September! We have so much to share with you this month including news, events, PD and more.

It is a packed month this September with the announcement of our first-ever live webinar Getting Graphic: Comics Around the World featuring - you guessed it - specialist panelists and information from around the globe. This one-hour webinar will span several aspects of graphic novel and comic knowledge, history, collections information and professional development, culminating with a discussion from Matthew Noe, the President of the American Library Association's Graphic Novels and Comics Roundtable and a passionate advocate of graphic medicine.

Feel free to have lunch with us, or claim it through the ALIA PD Scheme or Proficiency Recognition Program. A lot of love for the graphic novel medium and excitement for the future of the form has gone into the planning of this webinar and we cannot wait to share it with you on Thursday October 14 at 1pm AEST. Registrations are open now and you can sign up here.

We also had an engaging chat during this month's Graphic Novel Club focusing on women and comics, where we talked at length about diversity, gender and authenticity. In short, we think greater diversity of comic creators leads to greater diversity and representation in graphic novels, which is a wonderful thing. Of course, you can join us for the next installment of the Graphic Novel Club on Sunday October 24 at 3pm AEST for our discussion on Webcomics, and how libraries can integrate this dynamic format. 

You can read the three webcomics that we will be talking about below:

• Witchy by Ariel Slamet Ries;
• Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir and Sarah Andersen; and
  
• Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

You can register for our next meeting here. Happy reading and see you there! Now, onto the news this month...

News

• Marvel has announced a whole lot of series and story arcs for 2022 that should give you a good idea of comics they have in store.
• The best selling Injustice comics written by Australian Tom Taylor and Brian Buccelatto, based on the Injustice Gods Among Us video, have now been adapted into an animated series. The trailer is out.
• Alicia Keys adapts 'Girl On Fire' into a young adult graphic novel.
• Taraji P. Henson and Gabrielle Union to produce the film adaptation of graphic novel ‘Sorcerority’
• Publishers Weekly has interviewed Australian now living in the US, Simon Hanselmann about Crisis Zone which recently won an Eisner Award.
• Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo have created a very special issue of Nightwing with no panels. The whole issue is one continuous image. Follow the link to see a preview on Polygon.
• Shannon Hale, author of the highly acclaimed Real Friends trilogy with LeUyen Pham and The Princess in Black series with LeUyen Pham and Dean Hale, has written an open-letter to librarians and people everywhere with detailed research to challenge the perception that graphic novels are not “real books”. Read it and weep here.
• In yet another example of the problems with the work-for-hire basis of the American comics industry, Marvel is suing the descendants of the creators of some of their biggest characters to keep total copyright control and the entirety of the profits generated by those characters.

Collections & PD

• The Library Journal and School Library Journal in the US have been organising LibraryCon Live for the last few years, a day-long online con dedicated to fantasy, sci-fi, horror and graphic novels. The event will take place November 10 and will also be archived for access after the live event. To register click here.
• No Flying No Tights, an excellent resource for graphic novels by librarians for librarians, has published an article discussing the issue cataloguing and shelving of graphic novels at libraries.
• The Little Bookroom located in North Fitzroy, Melbourne have put together a great list with their recommended graphic novels. Best of all, they’ve also compiled a list of Australian graphic novels. Check out their full post here.
• Manga are often very long series with multiple volumes. If you’re looking for some Manga for kids and Manga for 13+ readers all in one single volume, librarian Matthew Murray has you covered. Here’s the list for kids and here’s the list for 13+ readers. 
• Though not specifically graphic novel related, this article is worth a read as we consider adding more e-Library options to our collections, particularly during continuous lockdowns.: The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books.
  
• It’s been an excellent publishing year for graphic novels for early readers. Have you got fans of Narwhal and Jelly Bean or the Adventures of Anders? Well, the School Library Journal has published a great roundup of early reader graphic novels worth checking out.
• The School Library Journal has also published a great roundup of graphic novels based on history and science. If you want to expand your non-fiction graphic novels for kids, this is a great list of titles.

Media & Resources

• Monash University Library has published a great video with Daniel Wee, special collections librarian, giving a tour of their amazing comics collection that includes lots of treasures and wonderful old comics.
  

New Releases for September 2021

 

Junior and YA

• Barb: The Last Berzerker - Dan Abdo, Jason Patterson (Simon & Schuster)
• Borders - Thomas King, Natasha Donovan (Little Brown)
• Codename: Sailor V Eternal Edition 1 - Naoko Takeuchi (Kodanksha COmics)
• Cuphead Volume 2: Cartoon Chronicles & Calamities - Zack Keller (Dark Horse Children’s)
• Eighty Days - A.C. Esguerra (Archaia)
• Iyanu: Child of Wonder Volume 1 - Roye Okupe, Godwin Akpan (Dark Horse)
• Jukebox - Nidhi Chanani (First Second)
• Little Nemo - Frank Pe, Winsor McKay (Magnetic Press)
• My Own World - Mike Holmes (First Second)
• Needle & Thread - David Pinckney, Ennun Ana Iurov, Micah Myers (Mad Cave Studios)
• Other Boys - Damian Alexander (First Second)
• Pokemon Sword & Shield Vol 1 - Hidenori Kusaka, Satoshi Yamamoto
• Stars in their Eyes - Jessica Walton, Aśka (Fremantle Press)
• Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven - Kami Garcia, Gabriel Picolo (DC Comics)
• Treasure in the Lake - Jason Pamment (Allen & Unwin)

Adults

• Gray - Arvind Ethan David, Eugenia Koumaki, Diana Greenhalgh (Clover Press)
• Memories From the Civil War Vol 1 - Richard Marazano, Jean Michel Ponzio (Cinebook)
• Monstress Vol 6 - Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda (Image Comics)
• Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Vol 2: The Engine Job - Alyssa Wong, Robert Gill, Ray Anthony Height, Minkyu Jung (Marvel Comics)
• X-Men by Jonathan Hickman Vol 3 - Jonathan Hicman
  

And finally, four graphic novels adapting the renowned Chinese Science Fiction writer Cixin Liu’s short stories have just been published with various artists and writers involved and published by Head of Zeus:

• Sea of Dreams
• The Village Teacher
• The Wandering Earth
• Yuanyuan’s Bubbles
  

ALIA Graphic presents: Getting Graphic: Comics Around the World

We thought we'd try something new before the end of the year and we're very proud to announce our very first live webinar. Every library needs a graphic novels champion. In this webinar we'll look at comics around the world. We'll learn about the history of Australian comics. We'll hear from the president of the American Library association's Graphic Novels and Comics Roundtable. We'll be introduced to what graphic medicine and why it's growing so rapidly and we'll also even discuss the contentious issue of cataloguing and shelving comics. 

Our first live ALIA Graphic webinar will be the perfect introduction for librarians and educators wanting to know more about comics and graphic novels around the world and in Australia. Hosted by ALIA Graphic Convenor and Iurgi Urrutia (Kingston Libraries, Victoria) who will be giving an overview of comics around the world, we’re pleased to announce three exciting speakers:

Daniel Best is an Australian comics historian and author with a vast knowledge of Australian comics history. Australia has had, and still has nowadays, a great range of comic creators that have usually gone under the radar. Daniel will give us an overview of the history of Australian comics.

Tara Eagleton is the Library Services Collections Officer at Wollondilly Library, NSW. Tara will discuss one of the ongoing, perennial, contentious issues around comics at libraries: how to best catalogue and shelf them. Different libraries do it differently, but one thing’s for sure, comics present challenges and the general rules don’t apply. Tara will present some guidelines and a framework. 

Matthew Noe is the President of the American Library Association's Graphic Novels and Comics Roundtable, he’s an academic librarian and a champion of graphic medicine. Matthew will join us live from the US to talk about the GNCRT, their past achievements, current programs and future plans. Matthew will also talk about graphic medicine, a fast growing movement and genre with comics that explore and contain narratives associated to healthcare. Comics are a very accessible and powerful medium for graphic medicine.

Thursday October 14 at 1pm AEDT (online - registration required)

Duration: 1 hour

Register for the free webinar now.

ALIA CPD Scheme Hours

If you are a member of the ALIA PD Scheme or Proficiency Recognition Program (PRP) you can log and reflect on your time spent engaging with ALIA Virtual Showcases for PD hours. There is no cap on the number of hours you can claim - the total is simply the number of hours that you can spend actively learning and engaging in the conference content. This will vary from person to person.