An inker with nearly two decades of experience in the job, Bob Almond officially began the Inkwell Awards in January of 2008. It was a program that grew out of his column in Sketch magazine (“Inkblots”) the previous year, and has been instrumental in bringing positive attention and recognition to what he calls “an oft-misunderstood and maligned art form.” Almond and the rest of the Inkwell team offer an annual award to show appreciation for the best inking work done in comics over the past year, and they also run a site that Almond describes as “a one-stop resource hub for ink art explanation and education consisting of tutorials, interviews, and features on inking, among other items. And we have an inker database in the works as well.”

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As usual, the good folks at School Library Journal have done an excellent job of explaining the importance and significance of Banned Books Week, beginning this Saturday, September 26, and going through October 3. Since 1982, this has been a pivotal week to celebrate not only the joys of reading, but the freedom of being exposed to ideas, themes, images, and words that challenge our beliefs, expand our knowledge, and give us the tools to grow. And while prose books face the most well known challenges in the public eye, comics, manga, and graphic novels still endure their rough history of censorship and banning.

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Next week's New York Times bestseller list is out, and David Small's incredible memoir Stitches is making its debut at the top.

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Ah, Persepolis. That great, great book. Marjane Satrapi's epic two volumes about her life growing up in Iran is one of the most readable and relatable graphic memoirs ever. It shared so much about Iranian culture, and it continues to teach. And now that it's been selected for Philadelphia's One Book, One Philadelphia literacy program, it will reach even further. Good. This work is one of those pleasures to read and savor, and it's completely deserving of this attention, which it achieved by winning out over other book selections to be named the selection of the 2010 One Book, One Philadelphia. Satrapi herself will be in the city to launch the program on September 23 at the Central Library there. Better yet, 5,000 copies of the book are being shipped in to local schools and libraries, and the city will hold dozens of lectures, discussion groups, and workshops for the book.

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I’m caught up in three graphic novels that I’m loving right now, and I’m feeling a bit like Goldilocks with them: One I’m really late to discover, one I’m early, and one I’m just right on time. Let’s start with the late one.

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Dr. Michael Bitz has been using creative media to help schools instill literacy, reading, and education for nearly a decade now. As the founder of comicbookproject.org, and later the Center for Educational Pathways, he has also subsequently written the recently released book Manga High, the story of a high-school comic-book club in New York City. Through the process of creating their own manga, this clubs’ members learned extensively about Japanese culture, which the book explores.

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I’ve been remiss about blogging about Disney’s recent buying of Marvel, mostly because, well, first, other business kind of got in the way, but then because I was waiting to see if the other coverage of the event would bring to light aspects I hadn’t thought of or considered. While there has been some excellent in-depth reporting on the deal, I still feel the same way I did when I first heard the news: a bit meh.

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I haven't had a chance to pick up the new Unknown Soldier series by Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli, but I'm eager to pick up the just-released collection, Unknown Soldier: Haunted House.  I came across this nice piece about it in The New York Times and immediately fell in love with the book, sight unseen. A comic series that takes on the entire scope of the political situation in Uganda is not only fascinating; when it's done right, as it sounds like it is, it deserves full support. Tucked away in the article is an interesting sales figure for the monthly book (about 7,500 copies of the latest monthly issue). Dysart is quoted as saying, "Whether we can fully compete in a world of superheroes, I don't know. The medium, sadly, has a limited readership. We'll see."

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Thanks to Diamond's John Shableski for passing this link on to me. It's from Chicago Tribune columnist Julia Keller, who had the audacity to write an article praising some graphic novels and received a barrage of reader responses as a result ("How dare you?" is how Julia sums up their letters). Julia defends her choice (while recommending Tim Hamilton's excellent new adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451), but I have to say, she does so rather feebly ("I understood the umbrage," she wrote. "Still do, in fact..."; she tellingly entitles her column "My secret shame"). Come on, Julia; stand up and be proud. Do we really have to be ashamed of reading graphic novels, comics, manga, and the like? Are we that beholden to the literary snobs that we can only talk about the format with our heads hung low, flaggelating ourselves over something we claim to like and (the horror!) enjoy?

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They're the movies we anxiously await, the movies we talk about years before they even come out. Movies based on comics are an endless source of debate among fans. Do they live up to the originals' status? Are they faithful adaptations? Do they take comics seriously, or do they treat them as inferior? The best ones pay due respect to their sources while taking on new life onscreen. Here are our picks for the ones that did it best.

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