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Of all the places that should have comic books, I think libraries should be at the top of the list. Sadly some still haven’t caught on and I’m left not getting to read the stuff I want. So much for finding everything I want at my local library.

As a general rule of economics and pop culture, when comics become more popular the access to comics becomes easier. There are online comic stores, regular comics stores, and now digital comics available in electronic formats. As much as I enjoy this new access to comics, I’m not interested in buying everything I want to read. If there was a place to borrow books for free I’d use it for comics. Oh wait, there is, it’s a library. The only problem is that the libraries I visit only seem to stock comics sparingly.

I’m a working stiff.  I’m not rolling in money or time. If I was I would buy the books I want to read and sell the ones I don’t enjoy. That involves money to buy all the books and time to setup online auctions, travel to the post office, confirming the buyer, etc; like I said,  time and money are two things that I do not have in excess – even though I make an effort once a week to share my thoughts in this article once a week.  Anyway, my local library should be able to help me in this situation. They should be able to provide access to comics and graphic novels for me to try. But they don’t.  I’ve even tried libraries out of my neighborhood and out of state.

The libraries I’ve visited have few comics and few graphic novels. They don’t carry single issues, though they sometimes choose to carry trade paper backs and even some hard cover editions. The problem is that they typically only have award winning books that were published before 1990. It’s a rare treat that I find anything printed post 1990 or even rarer to find anything with a superhero in it. I have found some great indie books in libraries and of course I can see why they’re great, but if a few graphic novels and comics are great why can’t they get more comics on the shelves, not just indie books but mainstream books as well.

I do not know how libraries buy their books or how they choose them. I’m happy that they have some comics, but come on.  It’s what they do! There is an abundance of comics that are worthy of being in a library but libraries seem to only stock five comics per year, including hard covers. What can be holding them up?  Some of the modern gems I’ve found are “Pride of Baghdad” and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” I got lucky and found a library that had “Runaways,” and I picked that up the moment I saw it.

Libraries are changing, but very slowly. Certain college libraries are carrying comics, I’ve been able to find “Y the Last Man” and “The Ultimates” at one. If libraries carried more comics, that could be another advantage to getting new readers. Imagine a person trying a book for free and then deciding they like it and choosing to purchase a copy for themselves? So my quest continues for modern books in local libraries, hopefully they take requests because I know I’m not the only one who wants to try some different comic books before I decide whether or not to buy.