In a storyline that’s been retold almost as often as the Depression-era rough-and-tumble beginnings of the comics trade, the mid-to-late 1980s saw a rebirth for comics, spearheaded by a revitalization of Batman as the Dark Knight. With Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, as well as Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, Batman (along with a few guys called The Watchmen) became the vengeful and schizoid resurrector of a genre that had been spinning its wheels creatively since some time in the 1970s. The revitalized character also gave birth, at decade’s end, to Tim Burton’s goony and wrong-headed film, but that’s another discussion entirely…

In 1988, right between Miller’s 1987 Batman: Year One origin story, and Morrison’s 1989 heart-of-darkness nightmare, Alan Moore and artist Brian Bolland lent their considerable talents to The Killing Joke. A 46-page episode that seemed – as Heroes artist Tim Sale puts it in his introduction to DC’s lavish 20th anniversary edition – “crafted at such an astonishing level, and printed so much more cleanly and carefully, that it seemed to be a different beast altogether.”

Two decades on, Moore and Bolland’s creation is certainly intriguing, but it does show how far the genre has come since then. The story, in which Joker busts out of Arkham Asylum (again!) to exact a sick revenge on Commissioner Gordon, is uncommonly savage, but nothing that Moore couldn’t do in his sleep. For his part, Bolland’s art is sharp and evocatively colored, particularly in the washed-out flashback scenes detailing the Joker’s tragic origins; certainly top-notch but not the sort of thing that normally deserves the 20th anniversary treatment.

What remains most interesting about The Killing Joke today is how tired it seems to be of the whole catch and release, superhero-villain game, starting as it does with Batman trying to come to some sort of understanding with the Joker:

I’ve been thinking< lately. About you and me. About what’s going to happen to us. In the end. We’re going to kill each other, aren’t we? Perhaps you’ll kill me. Perhaps I’ll kill you. Perhaps sooner. Perhaps later. I just wanted to know that I’d made a genuine attempt to talk things over and avert that outcome. Just once. I don’t fully understand why ours should be such a fatal relationship…

It’s that sense of exhaustion, that admission of “I don’t fully understand” that takes the modern superhero’s much-vaunted new sensitivity to entirely new levels. One wishes at times that Moore and Bolland would have wanted to give this story some more space, create a novel entirely of their own, because at 46 pages, the unanswerable questions raised here, the revealing backstory about the Joker’s origin, the icy-black joke that ends it all, feels almost rushed. And you should never rush true art.

—Chris Barsanti

Last week I mentioned getting into audio books for the first time. I must admit, I am still working my way through the 20 disc set of Christopher Paolini’s Eldest (12 CDs down, eight to go!) but this weekend something exciting was brought to my attention at my local public library.

I volunteer there on alternate Saturdays, and this week a patron asked me how to access free downloadable audio books at Listen Up! Vermont, through the Green Mountain Library Consortium. Though I had been the one to ask, “Can I help you?” I had no idea what he was referring to and couldn’t provide help without some outside assistance.

As it turns out, my local library has just this week started subscribing to a service that allows patrons to use their library card number to download audio books, which can then be burned to a CD when allowed by the publisher or transferred to an mp3 device, as well as listened to on a personal computer. Two downloads are allowed at a time, and the files expire after a week, at which point the audio book is ‘returned’ to the shelf and another patron can ‘check it out.’ With many of the newest titles, just like a popular recent release at the physical library, there is a waiting list. Older titles are often available all the time, so multiple members can download them the same week rather than waiting their turn. The selection is currently a bit limited: new releases and older classics without much in between, but new material is being added all the time.

Last week a reader recommended I check out Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy on audio book and I was happy to find it in the collection at Listen Up! Vermont, though there is a waiting list, so I got on that right away. I also had mentioned that I wanted to track down a copy of Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope, which is luckily available through the site as well. A mere five or six week delay while patrons in line in front of me download and listen to the files, and hopefully I’ll at least be listening to that work in time for the August Democratic National Convention here in the US, no matter who the candidates are at that point.

Libraries all over are doing their best to provide new services to patrons. Have you been to your local library lately to see what’s on offer? 

—Lara Killian

Charles Frazier remembers Anthony Minghella
Fascinating piece in the LA Times by Cold Mountain author, Charles Frazier, detailing his friendship with the late Anthony Minghella. Minghella directed the film version of Frazier’s book, and chose to make Frazier a key part of the film’s production. The men were colleagues and close friends:

The next January, we spent a wet week driving around North Carolina, hiking in the mountains, talking about books, staying up late watching movies—“McCabe and Mrs. Miller” for one. We drove all through the mountains and down to the Atlantic, 700 miles at least. It was like a college road trip.

Frazier’s article is a wonderful insight into Minghella’s artistic desires, his sensitivity, and, particularly, his adoration of writers.

Investment banker is India’s most successful English-language author
We thought it was Salman Rushdie—how wrong we were. The New York Times this week profiled Chetan Bhagat, author of the Nick Hornby-esque Indian hits Five Point Someone and One Night at the Call Center. One Night is India’s fastest-selling novel.

The article outlines Bhagat’s return to India (he wrote his novels while living in the United States), and his desire to make a difference in his country. Bhagat also reacts to his critics. From the Times piece:

“The book critics, they all hate me,” Mr. Bhagat said in an interview here.

But he has touched a nerve with young Indian readers. Mr. Bhagat might not be another Vikram Seth or Arundhati Roy, but he has authentic claims to being one of the voices of a generation of middle-class Indian youth facing the choices and frustrations that come with the prospect of growing wealth.

“I think people really took to the books mainly because there is a lot of social comment in there,” Mr. Bhagat said. “It’s garbed as comedy.”

Real-life Book Thief caught by determined librarian
Rob Lopresti, the librarian at Western Washington University in Bellingham, has become something of a hero in his community—and perhaps to book lovers everywhere. Rob’s refusal to accept that his library had been the target of a simple, run-of-the-mill theft, he put on his Sam Spade hat and uncovered a veritable ring of library such thefts across the US and Canada.

The Great Falls Tribune reports:

About 100 volumes of a book series called the Congressional Serial Set, dating back to the 1830s, had maps and other pages ripped from them. In all, the thief ripped 648 pages of historic lithographs, maps and other materials from the WWU library’s collection, according to the magazine article.

Lopresti found the documents listed for sale on eBay. He decided to purchase a handful of them to match with his lost property. His detective work paid off, but now, he notes, all valuable items in his library are now locked away from public view.

Maynard and Jessica to become a major film
Hot-shot producer Scott Rudin has purchased the rights to Rudolph Delson’s excellent Maynard and Jessica, according to Reuters Canada. The book details the evolving relationship between the titular characters throughout 2000-2002. It’s told from the very strange perspectives of more than 30 characters including Maynard and Jessica’s family members, their friends, a Russian scam artist, birds, and an emergency brake on a train. 

According to this article, Delson is happy with Rudin’s choice of screenwriter, Liz Meriwether, but he says he won’t be involved in the adaptation. Perhaps Scott Rudin could take a lesson from Mr. Minghella…

—Nikki Tranter

Can I get a show of hands – how many of you listen to audio books? Come on, now, don’t be shy, I know you’re out there. I’ve just started figuring out why they go out like hotcakes at the local public library where I spend some of my Saturday mornings helping out. At the moment my commute is mercifully short so I’m not drawn to audio books to make me feel like I’m wasting less time in the car. Rather, I like to do two things at once (minimum) and listening to an audio book allows me to get through some reading I’ve had sitting on the back burner while working on a project around my apartment.

Currently I’m whizzing through Eldest, Christopher Paolini’s bestselling sequel to his bestselling first novel, Eragon. Since there was all that hubbub when Eragon first came out (genius 15 year old author et cetera) it has been on my to-read list, along with about a thousand other things. Letting British-accented award-winning narrator Gerard Doyle read me the unabridged Eldest is a treat.

When I first decided to give an audio book a try a couple of months ago, it was because a patron had just returned one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, Thud. Something to keep me laughing, I thought, that would be good, and I always enjoy Pratchett parallel giant-turtle-centric universe. I started listening to Thud only to quickly realize I was familiar with not just the recurring characters in the series, but with the plot of this novel as well; turns out I had actually sat down and read Thud at some point in the past, holding the paperback in my own two hands, the old-fashioned way.

Disappointment quickly turned to renewed interest – I continued listening, but without the need to pay direct attention to the story at all times. It was more background noise while I puttered over the weekend. An ideal intro to the world of audio books.

With Paolini’s books however, it’s all new to me—I haven’t seen Eragon the movie yet, either—and I do need to pay attention as the action moves along swiftly and the characters are a bit complicated. I’m pleasantly surprised to find that even though I could read faster than the narrator can speak, it’s nice to move steadily through a work of fiction. (And also to not have to guess at pronunciation in the Ancient language.)

Brisingr, the third book in the Inheritance trilogy, is due out in September 2008, so we have that to look forward to. What’s your take on audio books? I know I would like to get my hands on presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s Grammy award-winning The Audacity of Hope. Any other particularly good ones I should know about?

—Lara Killian

Maybe it’s true that Canadians are just simply nicer. While American graphic novels of late have been concerning themselves with abject self hatred (Adrian Tomine), vampire slackers (Jessica Abel), and the like, Michel Rabagliati just goes on creating work that’s just as inherently decent as ever. In Paul Goes Fishing, his third graphic novel—Paul Moves Out and Paul Gets a Summer Job being the previous installments—Rabagliati continues his penchant for crafting delicately hued graphic autobiographies that are just as winning as any of the grimmer and self-lacerating work being produced in the lower 48 states, but often just as psychologically astute. Nice doesn’t have to mean clueless.

A Montreal-based illustrator and family man with practically no experience in the outdoors, Rabagliati spends the first part of his newest volume learning how to go fishing, of course. Using the structure of a summer vacation at a lakeside cabin with some friends, Rabagliati spins off from that basic conceit to explore his relationship with his father, his childhood (sparked by his re-reading in the cabin of Catcher in the Rye, a favorite from his moody youth), and the painful process he and his wife endure in a series of difficult pregnancies. He also finds the time to provide a short history of the graphic arts industry’s transition from hand-work to personal computers that beautifully skewers the designers’ cult of the Macintosh (“between 1987 and 1995, I handed over more than $40,000 to Apple & Co. for equipment that was practically obsolete before I’d even unpacked it.”)

Through all this, Rabagliati keeps a basically upbeat mood, with his freshly energetic black-and-white illustrations and cast of characters who are pretty much always (with a few obvious exceptions) smiling. Rabagliati’s approach verges on Archie comics simplicity at times (when characters cry, it’s actually rendered as “boo hoo”), but it somehow never seems fake, and that’s the beauty of this book. For all their troubles and occasional emotional outbursts, Rabagliati’s cast seems a supremely decent and nice group who anybody would consider themselves lucky to know. To create that kind of world, and to do it in a way that is far from insulting to one’s intelligence, takes a rare kind of talent, something that Rabagliati has in spades. Must be the Canadian in him.

You can view a preview (in .pdf form) of Paul Goes Fishing over at Drawn & Quarterly’s website here.

—Chris Barsanti

North Carolina students win Battle of the Books
Wow, I wish we had these kinds of comps at my school. What could be better than winning a medal for reading? The Lincoln Tribune reports:

West Lincoln Middle School students recently competed in the “Battle of the Books” at the district level and took top honors.
The team will compete at the Regional Level on Monday, April 21st at Imaginon in Charlotte.

The students had to answer questions on 26 books of varied genres. This article also discusses the history of the NC competition.

Borders in trouble
So writes the Telegraph: “Borders, which has racked up losses of more than $300m in the past two years, has appointed JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch to find a buyer or strategic investor.”

Digital music stores, illegal downloading, and discount book retailers are apparently the problem, with Borders not the only store hit. Barnes and Noble has also taken a dive, particularly its music department.

This Guardian article tells us Borders’ chief executive George Jones “blamed competition from cut-price megastores such as Wal-Mart and CostCo for eating into book sales.”

Revisiting Bret Easton Ellis
The LA Times looks back on “he onetime enfant terrible”:

To some, he’s a kind of Duran Duran of the literary world: fashionable once, but now a footnote. Or at best something that comes back for periodic rediscovery but remains a relic, like the skinny tie.

Article includes excerpts from Ellis’s work.

Asbury Park resident annoyed over library fines
This one hits a bit close to home. Let’s see if I can make sense of it. So, Ted Koch borrowed some library books and forgot to take them back. Now, he owes the Ocean County Library $55, which the library wants him to pay ASAP or they’ll turn the debt over to collectors. Koch is quoted:

I came back from Florida, I got lazy, I didn’t go online to renew. Now they’re going to turn it over to a collection agency and it’s going to go on my record and endanger my ability to get a mortgage or a credit card? Do they realize how ludicrous this is, ruining my credit over a library fine? It’s like killing a fly with a howitzer ... Next thing I know Tony Soprano is sending two leg-breakers to my house to collect the $55.

Okay, so that last bit is an overreaction. I’d say it’s just a business wanting their damn stuff back. Should a library be considered a business? Of course it should. It provides a service, and when it cannot adequately provide that service because of someone’s admitted laziness, there’s a problem. The best way to solve such problems? By charging that lazy person a fine. Isn’t is public knowledge now that libraries charge fines for late books, or is Mr. Koch just that far out of the loop?

I can identify with Ocean County Library director, Ellen McConnell, who discusses the range of frustrating excuses library patrons will give for their books coming back late. Reasons, I can guess, they use to excuse them from the fining process. I work at a major chain DVD rental store, so I feel Ms. McConnell’s pain. Do I ever, in fact. You feel sometimes like a fourth-grade teacher listening to excuses about lost homework: I forgot, my dog ate it, I lent it to a friend who said they’d returned it. And while Mr. Koch complains about $55, I can stand at my counter and argue myself black and blue with customers over fines ranging from .75 cents to thousands of dollars. Some people just don’t want to pay.

You might think, too, that your fine is outrageous. But you’re not the only one holding onto stock. If libraries just let people willy-nilly do what they want, well, what kind of service would that become? For the people who use it properly?

I wonder what it is about libraries that gives the patron or customer this sense that they need not take the best care possible to uphold correct borrowing procedures? I often have customers bringing in late movies who will tell me they couldn’t get in the night before, so is that okay, can I waive their fines? Um, no. You think Avis will waive your fine if you bring their rent-a-car back a day late?

At least, like Ms. McConnell we have the ability to work with the customer, to assist those who have genuine issues about returning products. Went into labor? Yeah, maybe I can look at pardoning a fee. Pay your fines on time and never give anyone any hassle? I can help you out, for sure. Avis, I tell you right now, won’t do that.

It’s even worse that Koch is all, “Yeah, I was lazy”. So everyone else misses out. Koch says he’s raised money for the library, he’s a library fan. Well, he of all people should understand the library’s position instead of publicly ridiculing its procedures.

—Nikki Tranter