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Believe it or not, the collection in the Law Library is not made up entirely of reporters and collections of statutes. A good portion of our books can also be read for pleasure and part of that subset is a growing collection of graphic novels.
Here is a list of all the graphic novels (so far!) that can be found in the library.
1. Four volumes of Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre, written and drawn by Batton Lash (who unfortunately died this last January.) Wolff & Byrd are lawyers who specialize in the supernatural. They represent vampires, ghosts, zombies, demons, and regular people whose lives are negatively impacted by the intersection of law and horror. The stories are very humorous (there are many, many puns) but they also bring up interesting legal ideas. If the dead ever do come back to life, future lawyers would be well advised to consult these books.
2. One graphic novel we have is best described as a piece of propaganda. Honmono by Emiko Iwasaki is a book produced by the World Intellectual Property Organization designed to teach teenagers about the harm caused by counterfeit goods. The interesting thing about this book is that it is a manga volume, meaning that it is drawn in Japanese style and that the story is printed from back to front.
3. Has anyone ever read the users agreement to any digital service they have signed up for? Artist R. Sikoryak has, and to emphasize their absurdity, he adapted the iTunes user agreement as Terms and Conditions: The Graphic Novel. Sikoryak broke the text into dialogue balloons and then drew Steve Jobs as the character reciting it. Each page is drawn in a different style and is an homage to other comic books and strips. So on one page Jobs will be drawn as Popeye and on another he will be Homer Simpson or Dick Tracy or Archie or Ziggy.
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4. In Chicago, during the 1890s, serial killer H. H. Holmes murdered a number of people. (The exact number is unknown. Estimates range anywhere from 9 to 200.) The artist Rick Geary turned Holmes’s life story into the fascinating graphic novel The Beast of Chicago. More than just a murderer, Holmes was also a bigamist, a con man and a swindler and the tale of his malfeasance and increasing madness makes for fascinating reading.
5. The civil rights movement was an epic moment in American social and legal history. Congressman John Lewis was there through it all and he turned his memories of the march in Selma into a 3 volume graphic novel titled March.
6. And finally, there is The Beats: A Graphic History, a collection of stories by various writers and artists that profile various people from the beat generation. While this book is not particularly law related, the library has it because one the stories (“The Janitor,” about Chicago bar owner Slim Brundage) was written and drawn by the library’s night circulation manager Jerome Neukirch.
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