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Bookhunter
by
Jason Shiga
Ripped from today’s headlines, Bookhunter fires off and you can’t quit reading. The excitement is fulfilling. The year is 1973. A priceless book has been stolen from the Oakland Public Library. A crack team of Bookhunters (aka. library police) have less than three days to recover the stolen item. It’s a race against the clock as our heroes use every tool in their arsenal o
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Paperback, 144 pages
Published
May 1st 2007
by Sparkplug Books
(first published 2007)
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(showing 1-30)
Brilliant.
Another small press comic read. Many times there is a good reason one of the large publishers isn't carrying a work. But other times you get something really fun and niche like Bookhunter.
Bookhunter is about Library Police in a world where they hunt down stolen books like Seal Team 6 hunts down terrorists. This is quick, fun, absurd, and super nerdy, with a ton of technical mess about book binding and such.
I'd describe it more to convince you to go read it, but it's free online at h ...more
Another small press comic read. Many times there is a good reason one of the large publishers isn't carrying a work. But other times you get something really fun and niche like Bookhunter.
Bookhunter is about Library Police in a world where they hunt down stolen books like Seal Team 6 hunts down terrorists. This is quick, fun, absurd, and super nerdy, with a ton of technical mess about book binding and such.
I'd describe it more to convince you to go read it, but it's free online at h ...more
If you like libraries, you will LOVE this book. If you like libraries of the pre-Internet era (card catalog, circulation stamps, etc), you will LOVE this book EVEN more.
The premise is that the Oakland Public Library employs a special police force (equipped with a SWAT team, guns, forensic experts, and so much more) to enforce library violations, such as overdue books, damaging library materials, etc. The team, led by special agent Ray, is called into investigate the theft of a precious incunabu ...more
The premise is that the Oakland Public Library employs a special police force (equipped with a SWAT team, guns, forensic experts, and so much more) to enforce library violations, such as overdue books, damaging library materials, etc. The team, led by special agent Ray, is called into investigate the theft of a precious incunabu ...more
Absurdly technical, and also simply absurd. I think the card catalog fight scene at the end was my favorite part.
I'm a little appalled that the librarian just handed over all of the patron checkout records with nary a thought to patron privacy concerns, since in the words of the American Library Association, "Protecting patron privacy and the confidentiality of library records are deep and longstanding principles of librarianship." Remember the Patriot Act issues? https://www.aclu.org/national-securit...
Ok, I may be overreacting a little. Or not.
That small one-panel eyebrow-raise aside, the book is...ok. ...more
Ok, I may be overreacting a little. Or not.
That small one-panel eyebrow-raise aside, the book is...ok. ...more
A comic for bibliophiles or librarians!. Agent Bay is the Chief of the library police and he hunts down stolen books. Set in the 1970s the book opens with our hero in action. Then the rest of the book contains the main story involving the theft of an 1800s Bible on display in the Oakland Public Library. Bay is the type of officer who chases his suspects across the roofs of buildings and swings by cables when necessary. It was a fun little story that I enjoyed bur it is aimed at those with knowle
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Aug 18, 2012
Sarah
rated it
it was amazing
Shelves:
humor,
crime,
mystery,
illustrated,
graphic-novel,
revenge,
alternate-history,
hardboiled,
books,
library,
format-book
One of those rare and wonderful offspring of the digital revolution, Bookhunter is available online (free! at shigabooks.com) and is worth the load-time and slow scrolling.
Noir mystery with a sepia tone, Shiga writes out this hardboiled detective story about a rare book stolen from the Oakland Public Library (yes!) in 1973. Classic in tone, you half expect Bogey or Valient to wander into the frame and contribute a few choice lines.
Sufficiently twisty and turny, there are enough characters and ...more
Noir mystery with a sepia tone, Shiga writes out this hardboiled detective story about a rare book stolen from the Oakland Public Library (yes!) in 1973. Classic in tone, you half expect Bogey or Valient to wander into the frame and contribute a few choice lines.
Sufficiently twisty and turny, there are enough characters and ...more
An enjoyable and fun read, but so laden with jargon that I just had to ignore words and push through sometimes. I'm not talking complex scientific jargon (I consider myself a pretty scientific guy), I'm talking about phrases that actually left me wondering whether Shiga just made up some phrases to achieve an effect. Also, some parts of the story made me wonder if I was missing pages, because there seemed to me to be large leaps in logic. But maybe I was missing something.
All that aside, it was ...more
All that aside, it was ...more
If you are a library geek, especially a tech services one, this graphic novel is for you. I truly enjoyed it. Mainly because I like the idea of the library having a police force. Serving and protecting the collection from censorship and theft. Some of the technological things went over my head. I really think that you need to have worked behind the scenes in a library to relate or be geeky enough to do your research about it. All in all, I got to reminisce about the old card catalog and laugh my
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It's a 1970s action movie, using real library lingo--correctly! It might not be historically accurate (tattle tape, magnetic security gates, early computers storing records--were these things around in 1973? I sure wasn't, so I have no clue.), but it is a lot of fun.
Best library cop comic ever? Read it at the author's site:
http://www.shigabooks.com/indeces/boo...
http://www.shigabooks.com/indeces/boo...
Really fun and quick. A must read for librarians, especially. Makes me want to work for the Library Police...
A little delightful afternoon snack for any bibliophile. The attention to terminology, technology, and historically accurate binding techniques is exquisite.
This is so good! The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" video in the Oakland Public Library, with some Umberto Ecoish bibliophile mystery thrown in for good measure.
A really fun comic book. Shiga has never let me down yet. The alternate universe in this book is very nicely realized. Not your usual fantasy or sci-fi send up, but merely an alternate world where books are treated very, very seriously. The action deserves special mention. The way Shiga frames and draws action sequences really sucks you in. It's like watching a competently directed action film where you can understand what is going on (i.e. before the more modern cut-cut-cut style of directing).
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Un véritable hommage au métier de bibliothécaire! Shiga reprend ici le genre policier pour sublimer la valeur des livres et des bibliothèques pour le maintien d'une société démocratique et cultivée. Tout dans cette histoire se passe très rapidement; les enchaînements entre l'enquête et les folles poursuites suffisent à captiver le lecteur et à le rendre en haleine. J'ai adoré le personnage de Bay, un détective comme les autres, mais aux ambitions très marginales. Bravo!
Brilliant! A library police procedural, as it were. If I weren't married to a librarian and hadn't spent 15 years working in telecommunications, I wouldn't appreciate half of this. Love the realistic details on the investigation, not to mention the considerable action and intrigue. The artwork does a great job of setting the appropriate tone and attitude.
Even though I'm studying to become a librarian, library humor doesn't appeal to me. I had trouble getting through Rex Libris and don't get me started on the TV show The Librarians. This book had a lot to do with older library systems and book preservation. I think I'm looking for something different with my library-centered entertainment.
In Oakland California in 1973, Special Agent Bay of the Library Police is a tough as nails detective, taking down book thieves. This graphic novel captures the feel of a gritty 70's cop show with a library theme and it's amusing for some of its references to older library technologies (e.g., magnetic tape and card catalogs).
Part film-noir, part library sciences, "Bookhunter" is what happens when book theft is taken seriously. As a librarian, I could only wish that this is how we treated our string of disappearing books. Full of action and behind-the-scenes knowledge, "Bookhunter" is a graphic novel for librarians, teachers, and a word of warning to all readers.
Over the top. I loved the library references!
Being a librarian I’m always interested in seeing comics based upon libraries/librarians and unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) there aren’t that many of them out there. So when I heard about Bookhunter by Jason Shiga, himself a former library employee, I had to give it a read. Bookhunter tells the story of Agent Bay and his crack team of library police that track down those that steal books and this is the mother of all cases for the team. It’s a wild and somewhat crazy ride into the world
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Fun to read, but a bit of a weak ending.
Do you know what they do to book thieves up at Santa Rita?
–Special Agent Bay, in Bookhunter
A historic bible on loan from the Library of Congress has been surreptitiously swapped for a fake, and the library detectives at Oakland Public have only three days to find the original before the feds 'come to collect.' The mild-mannered public library world has previously collided with the denizens of hard-boiled crime fiction (a fabulous Bogart and Bacall trailer springs to mind), but this time it's p ...more
Jan 26, 2010
Dan
rated it
liked it
Recommends it for:
Graphic novel fans, people who are passionate about the library, fans of the sabotage video
Recommended to Dan by:
Angeli
The setting, Oakland 1973. This book is about a library detective. His job is to track down lost books. The action is over the top. At one point the detective shoots a fellow officer in his bullet proof vest to provide thrust to get across the room. The whole gag through the book is that the library cops treat missing books like missing people. The story unfolds as a hardcore action packed crime drama, as the library cops investigate a the theft of a rare 19th century bible on loan to the OPL fr
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Apr 09, 2008
David
rated it
it was amazing
Recommended to David by:
Librarians, Death Merchants, Library Administrators, Badass Cops
Remember when Phillip Baker Hall swaggered onto the set of Seinfeld as the library detective Bookman and threw down the due-date gantlet with the wonderfully anachronistic Jack Webb lines “Well I got a flash for you, joy-boy: Party time is over!”? This delightful graphic novel thriller delves beneath what was only hinted at there: the dark secret underworld of the library police. Special agent Bay - a total badass more in the mold of Dirty Harry than Joe Friday – has been put on the trail of a r
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I saw a review of Jason Shiga's Demon, volume 1 online, and decided I wanted to check out. And I loved it. It's dark, weird, and more fun than a book with its subject matter should be. A few days after reading the second volume, I was moving some books around at work and found a copy of Bookhunter.
It's certainly brighter than Demon (as are most books) but it is just as fun. It's a weird 70s crime story centered around a theft at a library. I read a few reviews that mentioned that it was the sort ...more
It's certainly brighter than Demon (as are most books) but it is just as fun. It's a weird 70s crime story centered around a theft at a library. I read a few reviews that mentioned that it was the sort ...more
The main character is a special agent who only takes cases that involve books and libraries. He is like the old tv show "Dragnet" but for the literary world. His team is made up for a male scientist who is the stereotpical nerd and a quirky female scientist whose speciality is fingerprints. Similar to the current tv show "CSI" the Bookhunter and his staff hace a lab that is specifically for the investigation of book forgeries, fraud, and theft.
The plot is simple but humorous. The Bookhunter is c ...more
The plot is simple but humorous. The Bookhunter is c ...more
May 22, 2008
Allison
rated it
it was amazing
Recommends it for:
anyone who works in a library.
Recommended to Allison by:
coworkers
Shelves:
graphic-novels,
fiction
This is a brilliant action-packed thrill ride (I only wish my job was this exciting): All the gritty hard-boiled drama of a 70s cop movie, with very cinematic pacing--this graphic novel could be a storyboard, Shiga renders action with such efficiency. Best of all, the juxtaposition of the setting with the style keeps it hilarious throughout. It's about the library police . Come on, that's just genius.
Really I'd recommend this to anyone who likes graphic novels that are a little different, but ...more
Really I'd recommend this to anyone who likes graphic novels that are a little different, but ...more
This graphic novel tells the story of the investigation of a stolen book. In this world there are library police, who are outfitted like a SWAT team and seem to a fully-fledge investigative unit. I want to live in this world.
The story takes place in the 1970s, so we get a good look at the library technology of that decade. The microfilms, shelves that move by wheels, the teletype machines, all of it making me, as a librarian, quite nostalgic. At one point, there's talk of how the thief used a 7 ...more
The story takes place in the 1970s, so we get a good look at the library technology of that decade. The microfilms, shelves that move by wheels, the teletype machines, all of it making me, as a librarian, quite nostalgic. At one point, there's talk of how the thief used a 7 ...more
this is a brilliant book and a must-read for every book nerd and library nerd. but, let me qualify. book nerd not just in the sense of "i love books". book nerd in the sense of "i love the structure of books". perfect for bookbinders, letterpress printers, and book artists.
the story chronicles a past i wish existed. armed library police officers bringing the hammer of the law down on censors and book thieves. the illustrations are fucking amazing, possibly my favorite in any graphic novel ever. ...more
the story chronicles a past i wish existed. armed library police officers bringing the hammer of the law down on censors and book thieves. the illustrations are fucking amazing, possibly my favorite in any graphic novel ever. ...more
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Jason Shiga is an award-winning Asian American cartoonist from Oakland, California. Mr. Shiga's comics are known for their intricate, often "interactive" plots and occasionally random, unexpected violence. A mathematics major from the University of California at Berkeley, Mr. Shiga shares his love of logic and problem solving with his readers through puzzles, mysteries and unconventional narrative
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