Dear Esteemed Readers,
Yesterday, September 25th, was National Comic Book Day! Not to be confused with Free Comic Book Day (the first Saturday in May), it celebrates a medium popular among children and adults alike. The origins of the day are murky--no single person or organization claims responsibility, yet it has appeared on calendars for a number of years, and fans of the medium have begun to embrace the holiday. Although we do not sell single issue comics at ECB, you can purchase collected omnibus editions, as well as graphic novels for all ages.
The first comic book is considered to be The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck (by Rodolphe Töpffer, from 1837), but many people associate them with superheroes, due to the explosion of superhero comics during the 1930s and 1940s (the "Golden Age of Comics.") The two largest comic book companies, DC (Detective Comics) and Marvel, still publish superhero comics; the former publishes Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman while the latter publishes the Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Spider-Man, among others. Recently published superhero collections include Batman Killing Time by Tom King and David Marquez, and The Mighty Thor by Stan (the Man) Lee and Jack Kirby.
Similar to audiobooks, comic books and graphic novels are often dismissed as "not really reading" because they are not pure text, but combine text and image--in some instances, they may forgo words entirely. Their reliance on illustration, so often incorporated into books for younger readers, also causes people to associate them with frivolous topics. Now superhero comic books have continued to push the boundaries by exploring more mature topics in recent decades, and many writers and artists have used graphic novels to discuss such topics as the Holocaust (Maus, by Art Spiegelman, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992), growing up under a theocracy (Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi), and LGBTQ+ lives (Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, and Gaysians by Mike Caruto, just to name a few). A recent example is The Nightingales by Emil Wilson, a coming-of-age story about the unlikely friendship between a seventeen-year-old girl and the dying stranger who moves in with her family.
Graphic novels also remain popular with children and teens, and we sell them alongside their non-graphic counterparts (for example, the Wings of Fire series, Spy School series, and I Survived...series). Two recent installments in middle reader series include Baby-sitters on Board! by Raina Telgemeier and Gale Galligan, based on the books by Ann M. Martin, and Big Nate: Curse of the Puffy Shorts! by Lincoln Pierce (whose collection of comic strips is much closer to the original comics books of the late nineteenth century). For teens, Alice Oseman released the concluding volume of collected strips from her webcomic Heartstopper.
I hope this short introduction to the medium of comics will encourage you to check out our offerings, or even to visit our friends at Fantom Comics; if you are already a fan, maybe I will run into you at the nearby Baltimore Comic Con this weekend.
Excelsior!
Keith, ECB Receiver (and longtime pannapictagraphist)
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