SLJ Talks to the Creators of Internet comic Unshelved

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Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 06/21/2006

Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes may not be household names, but their Internet comic Unshelved—set in the fictional Mallville Public Library—has created incredible buzz.

The pair has seen their readership explode to more than 30,000 fans, mostly librarians. The strip's main character, Dewey, is an ironic YA librarian; Colleen is an old-fashioned, computer-illiterate reference librarian; and Tamara is the cheery, idealistic children's librarian.

If you want to catch Ambaum (a YA librarian who uses a pseudonym) and Barnes (a Microsoft employee) in the flesh, they'll be at the American Library Association's annual conference in New Orleans from June 22–28 hawking their latest book and other Unshelved goodies.

School Library Journal caught up with the two before they left for ALA to talk about the origins of Unshelved and how they're using their fame to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Bill Barnes

How does it feel to be celebrities in the library world?

Gene: I didn't think there'd ever be a day when librarians would run up to us shrieking, "I love you guys!" In the beginning, I imagined us being stoned by a crowd (like in the Life of Brian), or driven out of a city, but never praised.

Bill: Whereas I always dreamed of a day when librarians would shriek at me.

Who came up with the idea of a comic strip set in a library?

Gene: I think we came up with it together, but Bill claims credit. He was working on a strip about a couple on an endless RV trip. I kept telling him stories about my days at the library. We realized we'd both read the complete run of DC's Blue Devil in the 1980s, geeked out at a comic convention, faked our way into writing seminars with Brian Michael Bendis and Will Eisner, and on the plane home we started working on our characters.

Where do you get material for your comic strip?

Gene Ambaum

Gene: Material is all around me. I love it when unworkable orders are handed down from the mountain, when computer users complain about psychic assault, and when folks try to lie their way out of library fines.

But I take more notes when I'm standing behind rude people in a coffee shop or overhear cellphone calls people shouldn't be having in public.

In terms of humor, I think there's nothing funnier than a toilet, and Bill thinks there's nothing funnier than an extra adverb. Unshelved is somewhere in the middle of that.

Bill: The real problem is when you mix adverbs and toilets. That's just wrong. I write whatever silliness comes to mind and then nine times out of 10 a fan will write in and say that it just happened to them.

Who does most of the writing and who draws the cartoons?

Gene: For daily strips, I write about two times as many as we actually publish. Bill occasionally writes, too. For Sunday Book Club strips, we'll pitch ideas back and forth to find our strongest idea and then write it together. Bill draws 364/365ths of the strips. Then I humiliate myself by drawing one every year for his birthday.

What's the biggest misconception that people have of librarians?

Gene: The biggest misconception is that librarians all read books. I do—I don't want Nancy Pearl hunting me down—but I know many people who don't. I've learned that I love talking to librarians—they're usually fighting the good fight in their communities, they value passion over salary, and they've read great books that I want to hear about.

Bill: Either children's librarians are very happy or else they put on a sunny veneer over their dark angst-ridden souls. Either way a lot of them hop and clap when they're excited.

Tell us about your latest book?

Gene: The new book is Book Club. We named it after the new comic-format booktalks we've been publishing every Sunday since last August. It just arrived from the printers at the beginning of June. It's $17.95 wisely spent dollars.

Bill: It's our attempt to pander to the Nobel Literature Prize judges by making the world's pinkest book. We self-publish our own books because major publishers fear retribution from library pressure groups.

You just completed your first auction of Unshelved art.

Gene: All the proceeds go the New Orleans Public Library Foundation. We'd talked about doing something for them for a while and finally settled on selling the cover art from the first book.

Bill: It just ended and was a big success. My head is several sizes bigger for seeing my art go for such lofty amounts.

Do you guys have full-time jobs?

Gene: I'm a YA librarian somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, under another name.

Bill: I left Microsoft in 1997 and went back in 2004 because I missed the free soda. I did work on Unshelved full-time for a while, but it wasn't paying the bills. It still doesn't, but we're getting closer. One day Gene and I hope to leave our day jobs and sit under a palm tree together and write about coconuts. That strip will rock.