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Comics and Libraries, Mafalda and Montreal, N.Y. Times on Gerry Conway, Tom Gauld on Librarians.
A Digital Catalog for Libraries
I’m sorry to say it has been a long time since I regularly patronized my local libraries. It seems they are far more modern than what once was and comics are a large part of that new century look.
From Marilyn Higgins and the Southeast Iowa Union:
MT. PLEASANT – The Mt. Pleasant Public Library has launched a new service: Comics Plus, a digital catalog of comics, manga, and graphic novels, available on internet browsers, as well as the Play Store and Apple Store. According to head librarian Kayleigh Septer, this program, accessible via an active library card with no outstanding issues (such as missing books), will open a wide variety of literature to cardholders, which would otherwise not be carried by the library.
Comics Plus is a third-party contractor, which, not long ago, approached Scepter with the prospect of collaborating.Taking into account the population of the county, it costs the library $1,300 a year, which the library considers a steal for the services provided. According to Scepter, the program is already gaining popularity with teen users of the library.
Not to be confused with the Comic Book Plus free resource for public domain comic books and strips.
Montreal Meets Mafalda
Mafalda, the South American comic strip sensation, will be immortalized in North America with a statue.
Cassandra Yanez-Leyton at the CBC informs:
Back in her native Córdoba, Argentina, Livia Magnani was used to bumping into poets and philosophers immortalized in time as statues sitting among the living in plazas and cafés.
A Montreal art café owner, Magnani often thought: why not carve out a space here for one of the greatest thinkers of them all — never mind that they’re only six years old?
Mafalda, the irreverent pro-democracy feminist and soup-hater created by the late Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón – better known as Quino – is now coming to Montreal.
The anti-capitalist Mafalda was, ironically, born out of a covert appliance ad, drawn up by Quino in 1963 at the behest of a company that wanted to see its products being used by a middle class family in a comic strip. The ads never ran but the big-headed character stuck and started to appear in Argentine newspapers and magazines before eventually fusing into the country’s identity.
The first English-language volume of Mafalda, translated by Frank Wynne for Elsewhere Editions, was released almost a year ago. The second is about a year’s away and three more are expected to come out every year after that, says Schoolman.
New York Times Gerry Conway Obit
George Gene Gustines for The New York Times:
Gerry Conway, a comic book writer for DC and Marvel who infuriated fans in 1973 by killing off Spider-Man’s love interest and then thrilled them later the same year by helping to create the Punisher, a violent, ambivalent and enduring antihero, died on Sunday at his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He was 73.
feature image from Tom Gauld at The Guardian
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