Apart from seven longboxes of comics taking up a lot of space in the closet, I have about 2-3 bookshelves of assorted material that could be classified under trade paperbacks and graphic novels.

I’m kind of choosy when it comes to what I read.  First and foremost, it has to be well-written.  If it ain’t, then I’m not interested, no matter how pretty the art is.  Boring material is boring material.

George R. R. Martin, author of GAME OF THRONES, has said that comics contributed heavily to his love of reading. I’m working on passing that love to my daughter as well.

While V has been tearing through the Harry Potter books for school, a few weeks ago she asked if she could read one of my comics.  We pulled out a few she might be interested in:

–POLLY AND THE PIRATES by Ted Naifeh. I got this at APE a few years ago, complete with autograph

–SUPERGIRL: COSMIC ADVENTURES IN THE 8TH GRADE by Landry Walker. A tpb of a miniseries from a few years ago.  Fun take on the character.

But she seemed especially interested in THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE MCDUCK and the supplemental COMPANION, both written and drawn by Don Rosa.

I’m not a huge Disney person; Pixar’s stuff is more to my liking.  But I like adventure stories. And I like historical fiction.  These books have both.  And keeping with the Disney theme, most of the material is G-rated, with a hint of innuendo thrown in here and there.

We follow important chapters in Scrooge’s life, starting with his youth in Scotland and the ensuing adventures around the world.  Each story incorporates real-life history and tidbits from Disney duck-universe creator Carl Barks’ decades of work.  I didn’t have a problem with Rosa utilizing as much as he could of the latter, but knowing where a minor story detail came from didn’t have much of an influence on my enjoyment of the story.

V started off reading them herself, but I think she enjoyed it more when we would read them together, which basically meant me reading all the dialogue aloud, incorporating appropriate accents where necessary.  I suspect K enjoyed it as well.  It was fun, but harder than you think.  Amazingly, all my Scottish lines made me sound like the chief engineer on the Starship Enterprise.

I’m just glad V is warming up to the idea of reading for pleasure, and not seeing it as a homework-related chore.