What I'm Reading Now - Part One: Graphic Chap Books

From time to time, someone asks, "What are you reading?" Most people can provide a quick answer. I, on the other hand, subscribe to the Stephen King school: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

I'm pretty picky. It has to be excellent to get my money. But still . . .

I read a lot.

So, I'm answering the question in parts. Novels, nonfiction, memoirs, religious texts, biographies, etc., will follow. Part One will be about something readers of Charles Dickens or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle should recognize: chap books. Both authors regularly used installments (chapters or "chaps") to sell their novels. You still see that, today, but it seems not as much as 125 years ago; nor even as much as 50 years ago.

That might be because we are looking in the wrong place. Dickens and Doyle saw a few illustrations accompany their chaps. Today, the graphic portion has achieved equal footing with the verbal. I call these "graphic chap books." These are not for children, and none of them are funny. There's not a comic among them. Will Eisner called this form "sequential art."

I call it excellent storytelling.

Horror: Rachel Rising
Alt History: Manifest Destiny
Crime: Fuse
Spy: Velvet
Dystopia: Lazarus
War: The Mercenary Sea
Steampunk: Galactica 1880
Pure SciFi: Letter 44
SciFi-Fantasy: The Woods
TV: Angel & Faith
Classic TV: Harlan Ellison's original Star Trek teleplay "The City on the Edge of Forever"

NOTES: "Firefly" fans, the parallels in "The Mercenary Sea" are intentional . . . and wonderfully done. Novelist Greg Rucka writes "Lazarus." To history fans, "Manifest Destiny" is the Lewis and Clark Expedition . . . but nothing like your U.S. history textbook!!

Photo from http://www.terrymooreart.com