Across the Universe you’ll find Essex County
And a bunch of really great graphic novels…
If you missed seeing the movie Across the Universe in a theater, you really need to see it on DVD. This incredible film is a musical that takes 33 classic Beatles songs and reworks them, reinvents them without rendering them unrecognizable. The visuals used in the movie are in stark contrast to what you would have seen with the fab four produced movies back in their early days. I think the Beatles would be hard pressed not to have a great deal of respect for the updated version of their music and the special effects used in the production. Sadly, the movie saw only limited release by studio execs who just ‘didn’t get it’.
Hmmmm….execs who just don’t get it. That’s a familiar theme that has impacted culture in North America since the concept of independence stirred in the consciousness of the original colonists. The king didn’t ‘get it’. The people of the colonies didn't want to live under the rules of the old world. It was, after all, the new world and things were quite different on this side of the ocean.
Fast forward a couple hundred years and there are similar (yet not so dire) circumstances. Have you listened to local radio or watched your local news casts lately? They are all scrambling to find an audience. The situation is much like the arrival of television and its impact the world of radio broadcasting and the movie houses, the internet is wreaking havoc on the entertainment world and the execs just don’t get it. When you hear the dee jays talk on music stations, they no longer have any attachment to the very reason people listen: the music. You almost never hear them talk about the songs or the artists. The talk, if you can call it that, is about the latest promotion that was designed to keep you around as a listener. Their promotions are created to bring in more advertising dollars. Now, the only time you hear anything about the bands and the music is if you listen to the weekend countdown programs like Rick Dee’s. If he didn’t have the artists to talk about he wouldn’t have a show.
Now, consider your local news casts. The car crashes and house fires are typically the lead stories. These kinds of stories don't draw the audiences like they used to. In an attempt to hold the viewers longer, a little more cleavage is shown on news casts. Again, the execs don’t get it. The local viewer has so many options sources to get information, but the best and fastest source to get real stories is on the internet where the better stories about positive life affirming things actually have a life online.
Fortunately, the owners of the better news sites understand the user perspective and they break the stories down into segments that your old newspaper used to provide. Newspapers? They still have a life and if they remember to deliver better information beyond the car crashes and house fires, they would do better to create a weekly edition and use the revenues from the classified section to support the cost of printing.
Some execs actually do understand that a change is ‘a coming’. Like the arrival of rock and roll, graphic novel publishing is beginning to find traction in some very key places. First of all is the library market. When no one else recognized the value of a graphic novel, librarians understood what compelled readers to pick one up, read it and share it with friends. The retail market is still a few years behind, but they are catching on. Kids, who long ago discovered a cool stash of these books in their libraries, have become old enough to run their own publishing houses. Sure, the early days were the same as garage bands and basements-turned-music-studios, but they were doing some really great, creative stuff.
Is it all superhero stuff? Hardly. There is such a vast array of stories being told in a graphic novel format. Will Eisner’s A Contract With God and Art Spiegelman’s Maus were a clear indicator of subject matter that went way beyond spandex. Biographies and memoirs seem to have been the favorite genres to gain traction. And now, graphic novels are making their way into the North American pop consciousness Manga has been around for ages though many don’t realize that Speed Racer is a product of the manga world. With the movie due out in few months, there are a lot of baby boomers who will find that their favorite race car driver will be sporting a new look…much like the songs of the Beatles were reinvented for Across the Universe.
The new generation graphic novel creators are now gaining more and more notice in the places normally reserved for traditional prose. However, we need to give credit where it is due. Public librarians have championed graphic novels for more than a few years now. I was lucky enough to be in the Diamond Comic Distributors booth for the Midwinter ALA convention in Philly when the committee chair for the Alex Award came looking for a way to contact Jeff Lemier, the author of a graphic novel called Essex County. She wanted to call him directly to let him know that his book was the winner for this year’s Alex Award. This is significant news as the last graphic novel to have been selected for this was a book called Persepolis and that was almost a lifetime ago. Unfortunately, my cell phone was dead so we had to contact him and his publisher via text messaging. Of course they were excited, but what in the world does it mean when your book wins an award during the mid-winter ALA convention? It means an instant run on your inventory.
If you havent yet read Essex County you may be surprised at how much you enjoy the story. The Essex County trilogy follows the lives of different characters in a fictionalized version of the author’s hometown in Ontario. The award-winning volume Tales From the Farm combines slice-of-life sensibilities with magic realism to tell the story of Lester, a recently orphaned 10-year-old who goes to live on his uncle’s farm and befriends the local gas station owner. The main character is a young kid named Lester who is experiencing a sense of isolation and loneliness, and escapes into a fantasy world of comics and superheroes to deal with it. While the book is aimed at adult readers, many young people can relate to this sense of alienation, and longing for something more in their lives. Its really worth picking up.
When it comes to winning a Caldecott or Newberry award, the traditional publishing world does understand what it can mean for sales. They submit book after book to make these lists because it moves a lot of product. When I lived in the wholesaler world, we would position a staffer at the back of the room for the award ceremonies and as each winner was announced we were calling the titles into our buyers. The buyers would then rush to get their orders in with a publisher who may only have as little as 500 copies available. Essex County was quickly out of stock and a call went out to do another print run. I am sure that the people at Top Shelf, the publisher for Essex County, were quite thrilled. After all, they hadn’t submitted the book for consideration. Someone on the committee discovered the book and the other members agreed it should win. It’s not that as a publisher, Chris Staros didn’t ‘get it’, it was really a pleasant set of circumstances that defined for him, and now a lot of other graphic novel publishers the value of a library award. You can bet, if these new execs are paying attention at all, they will now submit any book they can think of for these awards.
As the traditional publishing industry grapples with flat sales, you will see execs who still don’t ‘get it’, but the smart ones are adjusting to the new terrain while at the same time those rebellious graphic novel kids are starting to see the risks they took are all starting to pay off. Because of these risks, you get to see an ever growing range of stories. Demand for talent is already on the rise and the risk for the big houses is equal to the effort and focus. Who wins out? The creators, the smart publishers and ultimately, the audience.
Anytime a cultural shift takes place here in North America or anywhere else on the planet for that matter, we get exciting new ideas, new technologies, new music and new forms of entertainment. Our publishing and entertainment industry has reached a new kind of literacy and it’s a great time for new ideas to take root. Go pick up Essex County and you will see what I mean.
Next time on The Graphic Novels Guy: Aretha vs Diana, Interpretation vs. Adaptation and Graphic Novels invade the classroom.
John Shableski works for Diamond Book Distributors as a sales manager with a focus on the independent bookstore market, public and school libraries. He's been a panelist at BEA, a moderator for graphic novel panels at the New York Comic Con, a guest speaker at library events, regional book shows and a symposium coordinator. He's currently collaborating on several graphic novel symposiums across the country: as Vegas, Seattle, and New York. For general questions you can send an email to shjohn@diamondbookdistributors.com
Great point about libraries being early adopters - my local library now contains pretty much nothing except 'media resources' and comics...
Posted by: Adam | February 06, 2008 at 10:33 AM