Need Comics for Ebook Library
Mar. 11th, 2011 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_daily
My daughter's high school has no library and no space for one, so I volunteered to put together an ebook library for them. (Shoot me now.) Since I'm putting it together, I can include anything. Well, anything that won't bring the Wrath Of Lawyers And Other Parents down on my head. The school's a charter school, so it's not held to normal district rules; the approval committee for this is about three people.
So I'm looking for public domain & Creative Commons comics and graphic novels that would be interesting to modern high-school kids.
I decided that I wanted to keep the rights-and-usage part simple, so I'm limiting it to works that can be freely shared without restrictions, no weird licenses or fees to keep up with. That means (1) public domain, (2) Creative Commons releases, (3) other free-to-share licenses, and (4) anything I can get specific permission for.
While public domain works would be great, and I know how to get things from Golden Age Comics and the Digital Comic Museum, there's a lot to wade through. I'd like to avoid the classic
SEXISM
RACISM
And OUTRIGHT CRACK
...okay, some of the outright crack is acceptable. But the storylines surrounding the crack are usually atrocious (and see above, contains elements I don't want to encourage).
Suggestions, anyone? Specific recommended titles, or titles to avoid? Any sources of Creative Commons or other free-to-copy manga?
(Tags: in-joke: context is for the weak,theme: racism,theme: sexism,status: public domain)
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Date: 2011-03-11 11:19 pm (UTC)Villain:"No woman alive would ever pass up the opportunity of looking into a mirror"
Wonder Woman: *Smash* look all you want!
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Date: 2011-03-11 11:28 pm (UTC)Even for 40's comic books, that struck me as excessive. What, all female criminals can be captured by placing mirrors near crime-heavy areas?
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Date: 2011-03-11 11:20 pm (UTC)oh i am going to hell so bad.....
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Date: 2011-03-11 11:34 pm (UTC)They beat up Hitler and threw him out of an airplane. And spent way too much time climbing through windows and poking through other people's dressers.
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Date: 2011-03-12 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 12:31 am (UTC)I'm having okay luck finding ebooks (more books than I can figure out what to do with, really; I don't want a collection of "everything Gutenberg has plus every crappy self-published CC-licensed thing on the web"), but have had zero luck finding comics or graphic novels of any sort. Found a few webcomics, but that's all.
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Date: 2011-03-12 12:39 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-03-12 12:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-03-12 12:59 am (UTC)("School's out early today; they're releasing the verdict in the Oscar Grant trial and parents want the kids home before the windows start getting smashed.")
I may try to include a complete XKCD collection, but that doesn't actually fill the niche of "comic books."
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Date: 2011-03-12 03:03 am (UTC)Dreamer?
maybe Digger?
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Date: 2011-03-12 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 02:31 am (UTC)I'll have to go through those; Pogo's great, and some of the other titles look worth considering. Thanks!
ETA: I've decided you're a bad influence. See, I went to the site and clicked on a few things to download them, and that part is okay (except for the "Johnny learns about the evils of syphilis" pamphlet, which my life would've been just fine without), except that when I close the tab after downloading, Firefox jumps me to my next open tab.
Which is this. Which I have open because I haven't figured out what to do with it. I don't have a Delicious account (and am not starting one for Deviantart pics), and my bookmarks get erased about every other week when something in Firefox goes glitchy at me.
So, um. You are making me think Bad Thoughts. Or Good Thoughts about things I can't have, which = Bad Thoughts.
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Date: 2011-03-12 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 04:57 am (UTC)Not worried about the raciness; I figure if I could read it when I was 13, I can damn well hand it to high-school kids today.
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Date: 2011-03-12 05:08 am (UTC)On the webcomics front, I would recommend 'El Goonish Shive' by Dan Shive and 'Sequential Art' by Philip M. Jackson. Both of those have plenty of action and comedy and stuff, and deal with things that teens would probably find interesting. You might also want to look into 'Platinum Grit', 'Spinnerette' and 'The Wotch'.
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Date: 2011-03-12 03:28 pm (UTC)And very much thanks for webcomic recs; I was completely lost about where to start looking. (Was not looking forward to putting "webcomic" in google search, picking one out of ten zillion options at random, reading 5 or 6 comics; deciding if it's suitable for teens; checking for CC notice... repeat x 5000.)
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Date: 2011-03-12 11:31 am (UTC)Well, if we are recommending public domain comics
Date: 2011-03-12 06:30 pm (UTC)* And, while we are on the topic, late 40s-early 50s Crimebuster strips from Boy Comics/Illustories
*Toni Gayle strips from Young King Cole and Guns Against Gangsters. While not entirely free of sexism, it is rather refreshing to see a late 40s-early 50s story where a female lead doesn't take any crap from her love interests and isn't punished for being assertive.
* Undercover Girl stories from various A-1 issues.
* Worldbeater strips from Prize Comics and Headline Comics - because they start out silly and get really, really bizarre.
* Comic adaptations of various classic novels published throughout Target Comics
*Babe comics - pick an issue, any issue (one of the most surreal things I've ever seen anywhere)
* Super-Brat stories. Because you can't go wrong with the comic that asks "what if Dennis the Menace had super-powers?"
* Ace Periodicals World War III series. On one hand, it has Evil Russians. On the other hand, it presents a surprisingly complex depiction of a world conflict and offers some interesting insights into American mentality at the time of its publication.
That's all I can think of at the moment.
Re: Well, if we are recommending public domain comics
Date: 2011-03-13 05:50 am (UTC)Not sure how useful "really bizarre" is; 1940's surrealism may be a bit much for modern high-school kids. But I'm certainly willing to look at them & take notes to bring to the school officials, and see what they think should be included.
And I want some WWIII content, either comics or ebooks; there's a whole literary & wargame genre that vanished pretty much overnight when the Berlin Wall came down. I'd like kids to have some exposure to the politics that were a big part of US thought for fifty years.
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