I don’t know why, but I’m almost always surprised when my old life dealing with comic books crosses over to my new (OK, decade and a half) life as a librarian. Case in point, someone on a library listserv I monitor wrote [personal reference deleted]:
“I have a question about graphic novels. I bought my son (2nd grade) a graphic novel – Pokemon – and it says that it reads from back to front. That we understand. But how do we read on the page? Is it from right to left, starting on the right hand side of the page at the top right? Or top left? We do not understand. Thank you.”
I was going to write back and say, “It depends.” That’s true in American comic books with irregular panels. But a couple folks wrote back with better responses:
This is a pretty good example of how it reads (thanks to Tokyopop).
Some volumes are more difficult than others (when bubbles extend from one panel DOWN to another panel, for instance). But I’d think Pokemon is probably pretty standard and easy to follow as far as manga goes. This one is thanks to Viz.
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As one commentator asked, will we see Spider-Ham and Mickey Mouse together again?
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I haven’t been to a comic book show in YEARS, but I was thinking about going to this one in July.
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A belated happy anniversary to Lefty and Kelly Brown out in Ca-li-for-ni-a. From About.com: “10th Anniversary Traditional Gift: Tin or aluminum. The pliability of tin and aluminum is a symbol of how a successful marriage needs to be flexible and durable and how it can be bent without being broken.”
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Sorry for the terse post. My wife has been getting up at 4 a.m. almost all week, doing this end of the year student evaluation stuff, thus cutting into the blogging time. And they say teachers have it easy.
I thought I’d have one more chance this morning, but the daughter needed cuddling at 4 a.m. And that’s just fine.
ROG