Mangaman by Barry Lyga and Colleen Doran

Ryoko Kiyama, the title character of Mangaman by Barry Lyga and Colleen Doran, doesn't really think much of it when he falls through a rip in reality and into another world. He's a manga character. This stuff happens to him all the time.

But the new world he's fallen into is very, very strange. Everyone is so . . . rounded. And they think monsters and karate fights, sweat drops and surprise lines, are incredibly weird and he's nothing but a freak. Only one girl, Marissa, seems to like him exactly the way he is. But the rip between his world and hers is starting to close. He has to make a terrible choice. Should he stay with the girl he's falling in love with? Or should he go back to his own familiar world, and leave her forever?


If you love manga, this book is for you. It both honors and pokes fun at the crazy conventions of manga, and what we think of it, and it's also a great love story. With bonus monsters!

Flights of Fantasy

The best part about anthologies and short story collections is finding an author you wouldn't have encountered otherwise.  And then devouring everything else that author or artist has ever written.  So pick up a copy of Flight, any of the volumes, and dive in.  There's something for everyone in this collection of indie comics edited by Kazu Kibuishi. 

The library has several comics by artists who've contributed short stories to Flight.

A Deadly Serious Cat and Mouse Comic

Maus, by Art Spiegelman, was the first graphic novel I ever read. I was about twelve, I think, and I snuck it out of my brother's collection of comic books. There was just something different about it that caught my interest: it was a real book, heavy, with binding and a hard cover. Yeah, it was a comic book. But it wasn't like the Spiderman or Superman comics that I'd glanced at and found boring. It was a new way to look at a sad, serious subject: the Holocaust.