Getting one was surprisingly simple. Library and Archives Canada manages ISSN Canada, and the application form there is short. I applied; they pointed out something I was missing; I fixed it; they assigned an ISSN. Wonderful!
To assist readers in finding, identifying and using your serial publication, we recommend the following information be presented clearly, explicitly, and consistently on each and every issue or part:
title
name of publisher
place of publication
numbering and/or chronological designation
frequency
ISSN
Observing this best practice will help users to easily discover your serial publication and to distinguish it from other serials.
Soon I will add some metadata inside the web pages so that the ISSN is embedded as a Uniform Resource Number.
There’s a bookmobile in “Book Worm,” an Archie story first published in Life with Archie 225 (August 1981), which I read in Archie (Jumbo Comics) Double Digest 292 (November 2018). But there is no connection given to the Riverdale library! This is very curious, because of course it would be the town library that would organize a bookmobile.
Things begin with Archie and Betty going around getting donations of books.
First panel of the comic.
They go to Titus Titewhad’s house and ask him for a donation, but Mr. Titewhad gets unreasonably upset at this mild request and has a heart attack. Archie and Betty save him by taking him to the hospital. He’s so grateful he gives them a rare first edition to sell to fund the bookmobile.
As a librarian I think many colleagues would find this kind of donation to be, as we say, “problematic.” A rare first edition deserves to be in a special collection in a library where everyone can have access to it. On the the other hand, a successful bookmobile would bring delight to people all over Riverdale. It’s a shame Mr. Titewhad couldn’t donate the first together with some money.
“Book Worm” was written by Frank Doyle, pencilled by Stan Goldberg, inked by Rudy Lapick, lettered by Bill Yoshida and coloured by Barry Grossman. It is copyright Archie Comic Publications.
In this story, Archie’s parents are remembering how they met at Riverdale High, and say they got up to some antics, though nothing like what “Wild Willie” did. Naturally Archie wants to know who this was, and he tells the gang. Mr. Weatherbee overhears them and gets upset—because he was Wild Willie!
In one panel, Betty says, “I wonder who this Wild Willie was?” Jughead: “Maybe he’s somebody we know!” Archie (snapping his fingers): “The library!”
But then:
Mr Weatherbee in front of the Riverdale High library
(Note that this forbidding windowless wooden door does not match doors to the Riverdale High School library in other stories.)
Dilton soon finds some old yearbooks and reveals that Mr. Weatherbee was Wild Willie. Everyone is very impressed with their cool principal, and the Bee is relieved.
“That Human Touch” was written by Frank Doyle, pencilled by Stan Goldberg, inked by Jon D’Agostino, lettered by Bill Yoshida and coloured by Barry Grossman. It is copyright Archie Comic Publications.
In “Mustang Sally,” Archie and the gang are appalled when they hear that “due to the high need for student parking, the Riverdale High athletic field will have to be torn down to build a new parking lot.” This is a ludicrous premise, especially in the United States, where high school football is apparently very popular.
Sally, a student who I think only ever appears in this story, tells them about her parents:
Two panels from Mustang Sally.
“There was a big protest going down about student rights, and my parents helped organize a protest … which resulted in students getting a longer lunch hour and better library facilities!” This seems like a great example of how things happen in Archie comics: a 1960s student protest leads to more time for lunch and a better library.
The gang all dress up in hippie-type clothes and stage a big protest on the field. Sally says the new shopping center should be relocated and a student parking lot built there instead. The authorities are impressed and, presumably, the field is saved.
“Mustang Sally” was written by Hal Lifson, pencilled by Gene Colan, inked by Rudy Lapick and lettered by Bill Yoshida. It first appeared in Life with Archie 279 (July 1990), but I read it in World of Archie (Jumbo Comics) Double Digest 81 (October 2018). It is copyright Archie Comic Publications.
Last year I got a Parker 51 at the show. Like everyone says, it’s a great pen. It felt right from the first minute I tried it, and it’s always perfectly reliable. It is a pen that will always be a pleasure to use and I bet it will last for decades more. I think the Duofold Junior will be the same.
I just finished reading Robert Bringhurst’s fantastic The Elements of Typographic Style. It’s full of good advice, informed by a thorough knowledge of all aspects of type and book design, and as an object the book itself is gorgeous. I got it from the library but midway through I emailed Book City to ask them to get me a copy, because I want my own. This will be a regular reference.
Bringhurst has advice about text figures, which were new to me—or seemed so, but then I realized I’d seen them many times but never observed them. They’re lowercase numbers! They have ascenders and descenders, unlike “titling figures,” which are all the same height as capital letters. Unless you’ve gone to a great deal of trouble with your browser then I bet you’re seeing titling figures right now on this page.
Looking at back at where I thought I remembered seeing text figures, I had memories of British books. Here’s a scan of the inside page of my 1967 Fontana (I bet 1967 and F are the same height) paperback edition of Anthony Powell’s A Buyer’s Market:
Biographical information about Powell
Those numbers look great and fit in beautifully with the text, which makes it all flow well.
I decided I wanted to use text figures in what I write, including at work, where when I do something myself I write it in Org and then export to LaTeX and convert to PDF. (If I write a shared document we usually use Google Docs. All I bother with there is making sure headings are styled as headings, not formatted as large bold plain text.) Looking around I saw that Baskvervaldx has text figures, and it’s a version of Baskerville, which I’ve always liked in books, partly because of the Sherlock Holmes connection.
I tweaked my LaTeX defaults, and now my PDFs can look like this (the larger version has more detail):
Example text
They won’t all have those dropped headings, but some will. I got inspired by Bringhurst’s book and started using titlesec to format my titles. This is the code to make things look like that example:
For comparison, this is what the example text looks like in Emacs while I’m writing it, before Org works its magic:
M-x all-praise-emacs
Some people really care about typefaces, but I don’t (though perhaps that will change). Bringhurst goes into a lot of detail about them, more than I need, and I did skim a bit. I’m interested up to a certain point, but then they just end up looking the same to me and the nuances are lost. On the other hand, book design is something I do care about, and I learned a lot from Bringhurst. The Elements of Typographic Style is a treasure.
Miskatonic University Press
