The thing that prompted my interest in this series of manga books was a request from my 7-year-old nephew for volumes 6 and 7 of the series. I’d never heard of it before, and I quickly discovered that there are some 22 books in the series and bookstores didn’t carry the whole series, even ones with a concentration on comics. For the most part they had the most recent books on their shelves and that was it. Through searching online, and consulting specialty stores I figured out that volumes 6 and 7 were still in print. I ended up ordering them from a comic book bookstore in Chicago called Challengers Comics and Conversation. The staff there was super nice, and they even suggested some other books my young nephew would like that were related to Stan Sakai’s samurai rabbit.
I went to a superstore and they had this huge manga section – two entire walls and a double-sided kiosk of books – and it seemed this was the only section in the store where buyers were actually seriously shopping. They didn’t carry one Usagi Yojimbo book! That didn’t seem to bode well. It amazes me how far comic books have come since the days we sold them with LPC Group. LPC was the distributor for Marvel, Dark Horse, Image Comics, Tokyo Pop, and a host of other publishers before they went out of business as a distributor. Bookstores at the time were just getting hip to the idea of comics as a real goldmine, and we were on the cutting edge of a comic book revolution.
Comics are also used more by teachers to encourage reading, especially with reluctant boys and late readers across the spectrum. I remember sitting in a parent-teacher group session and the teacher telling parents how she was going to utilize comics to engage the kids to read in a 7th grade class. One parent raised her hand and said, I think the new term for comics is graphic novels. The teacher got really excited and said, wow, graphic novels - I’m going to have to remember that! I almost fell out my chair trying to repress my laughter. I had sit in so many sales meetings with publishers in this genre, and pitched the books to bookstores countless times, that it amused me to no end to see the teacher’s epiphany with graphic novels.
We do still sell some cutting edge books about comics, and they are published by University Press of Mississippi. Every season they have new and interesting books about comics and the art of comics, or graphic novels as they are called in the trade – see this link http://upmississippi.blogspot.com/2007/08/journey-into-comics.html for more detailed information about their books. It seems to me every self-respecting comic bookshop should carry their stuff.
Comic book readers and specialists in popular culture always seem to be looking for the latest thing or trend in comics. One of the things that came out of the Japanese comic book craze was producing books that read from right to left, which is Asian style. That was a big thing at one point. Then it was comics from places like Korea that were all the rage, and whatever was being shown on Cartoon Network that could be turned into a book series. A new book from University of Texas Press seems to be exploring new territory, and is worth noting here: -- Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez, by Frederick Luis Aldama. Aldama is professor of English and Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. He’s also the director of their Latino Studies Department. He seems well-qualified to write a book such as this. He’s the author of a previous book called Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia: Conversations with Artists and Writers. The book explores Latino representations in comics, from Marvel superheroes, and the likely suspects, to Latino masters such as Richard Dominguez. Shedding a much-needed spotlight on a vibrant segment of comics, Your Brian on Latino Comics illuminates the world of such superheroes as Firebird, Vibe, and the Blue Beetle, as well as profiling creative artists actively working in the genre, such as Laura Molina, Frank Espinosa, and Rafael Navarro. There are twenty-one interviews in the book and readers will get a real sense of the evolution of Latino expression in this format, as well as the influences, innovations, and many Latino transcendences of mainstream techniques. The amazing creativity of the people involved will inspire as well as entertain readers of comics and graphic literature.
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