CSotD: Warning: This posting contains graphic content
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Some encouraging news from Heidi MacDonald, who reports that in-store sales of graphic novels were up 22 percent in 2015.
She adds a couple of qualifiers to this cheerful announcement, beginning with some question about the accuracy of the measurement and the fact that juvenile fiction doesn't break out graphic novels separately, but the overall report is good and my own experience working with kids and books is that graphic novels and hybrids are, indeed, quite popular there.
And I'll qualify that by admitting that my experience involves working with a crew of young (8-14) writers who, by virtue of their interest in writing, are likely above average in terms of their interest in reading generally.
But tell it to JK Rowling or Suzanne Collins, who have tapped into an enormous market for long-form, non-illustrated youth fiction.
In fact, the review of a new TV show in this issue of the publication I edit was an assignment the writer initiated because she had loved the books it's based on, and, when I dangled the offer to attend the press screening of "The Fifth Wave," I had several volunteers who had read the book and were anxious to see the adaptation.
Anyway, I wouldn't show up in the stats either, because I buy graphic novels on-line.
The local chain store — which might as well be K-Mart for all that its staff knows about what's between the covers — primarily stocks Marvel books in that section, which may please Heidi MacDonald's fantasy/sci-fi crowd, but doesn't do much for me.
I've just, for instance, ordered Rosalie Lightning, and I rather doubt there will be a lot of Spandex and tough-talk in this graphic memoir of the loss of a child.
Meanwhile, the fact that they don't break out categories within kids book, besides being generally bizarre given the health of that section of the market, would become complicated by differentiating "graphic novels," in which the entire story is carried in panels, from "hybrids" in which text and illustrations both advance the plot.
That's a difference that matters to me, because, while the kids are anxiously awaiting Raina Telgemeier's "Ghosts," which will come out this fall, they are equally devoted to the hybrids like the Wimpy Kid and Big Nate books, as well as the raft of hybrids being put out by syndicated cartoonists in search of a new market.
Which they've found.
Even if the bookstores haven't been tracking it very carefully.
Which brings this up
I have resisted making this blog more phone-friendly because, as noted in today's Pickles, it seems silly to put graphics on the Web for people to see on teeny-tiny screens. I read (text-based) books on a tablet, and I suppose I could read them on a phone if I wanted.
But here's where I am on the topic:
A. Web sites optimized for phones and tablets look bloated and nasty on "real" computers. I've seen this site on an 8-inch tablet and it may not be optimized but it's there, so I don't feel compelled to change it. It's written on, and formatted for, a PC.
B. It would be absurdly hypocritical to launch a rant about newspapers shrinking their comics if I were going to turn around and do the same thing here. So I'm not.
So there.
Meanwhile, out in the real world
I am, as I write this, in the Lower Hudson Valley, which is within commuting distance of the City of New York, so whatever you saw of snow on TV yesterday, we saw outside the windows.
But we've also had the news on, and so when Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that there was a travel ban starting at 2:40 in the afternoon, we heard that, and then, a few minutes later, heard the mayor refer to it as a "state ban."
And my mother and I turned to each other and said, "Wait. A state ban?"
Which would have been silly, because I don't think the snow reached as far as Albany, at least in any quantities that could worry anyone, and the vast majority of the state's 55,000 square miles were just fine, thanks.
What they meant was a local travel ban that would be enforced by State Troopers as well as local police.
And you're wondering what in the hell this has to do with Kal's incisively hilarious cartoon, but, as the meaning of "a state travel ban" became clear, I said to my mother, "As badly as Cruz may have phrased things, that's the New York attitude people hate."
It's the attitude that assumes "New York" means the city, and everything else in the state and the country and the world is just sort of out there somewhere irrelevant.
So let's look at Bernie, because Kal has drawn him as I've heard him referred to, "angry."
That's a related, but different New York attitude. That's Ratzo Rizzo pounding on the hood of a taxi cab, saying "Hey! I'm walkin' here!"
It means nothing.
When you live in a compact, compacted, what-I-would-call overcrowded area, you learn to blow off frustrations quickly and then move on.
And, while people ascribe the New York accent to being Jewish or being Italian or being from Brooklyn or whatever, the harsh staccato works very well in Ratzo Rizzo land where everyone is used to it, and to the fact that people blow up in a moment and then chill down the next.
It doesn't play so well out in the Stix among the Hix, however, which is why Ratzo has to explain it to a horrified Joe Buck.
So, yeah, Bernie sounds like Ratzo, even after all his non-Gothamcentric years in Vermont. But the folks up there have long since gotten over the shock, and they know that he not only isn't going to kick you off his lawn, but he really wants you to play on it.
I'm not criticizing Kal on that point. He nailed it.
But Bernie's campaign may have to call in Professor 'Enry 'Iggins.
Or maybe he just needs to go back to Simon and Garfunkel for a second helping.
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