John Gallagher's Politics and Prose talk on Max Meow

by Bruce Guthrie

I went to John Gallagher's talk on his children's graphic novel series Max Meow at Politics and Prose on Friday morning (Oct. 21). I'm not sure I had ever seen him do his thing before. 

When P+P does a kids event on a school day, the store clears the floor and busloads of school kids show up for the talk. The kids, in this case second graders, sit on the carpet and listen. There's no book signing event -- the school libraries already have the books.

I'm not a family guy and as an adult I experience being around small children as drowning in a bowl of Mexican jumping beans. I don't know if kids were hyperactive like this when I was growing up. I'm sure we must have been and you just don't notice it when you're one of the jumping beans.

Anyway, John held the kids in rapt attention while he stood at the drawing board and gave them a history of comic books that went back to cave paintings and hieroglyphics, then to DC's Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman (he commented that make superheroes were always in capes, women were in swimsuits), and Marvel's Lee and Ditko and Kirby, and then where his own character Max Meow came from and the role his son's dyslexia had in all of it. This was to second graders! And they got it and stayed well behaved.

I was impressed!  

See more photos at http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/keys/2022_10_21A1_Gallagher