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Me blathering on last week, at the CCS Summer Create Comics Workshop; photo © 2008 CCS, shot by Robyn Chapman, posted with permission. 

Tonight I’m giving my presentation on Vermont comics, cartoonists and a thumbnail history of graphic novels at the Burnham Library in Colchester, VT, a-way up nawth a ways.

Burnham Memorial Library is at 898 Main Street, Rte 2A in Colchester, VT 05446; call 802-878-0313 for more info. I start blathering at 7 PM, and will go on and on and on for at least an hour or so. There will be free comics and Q&A.

Directions: Going north on I-89, take exit 16 into Colchester, Route 7 — follow Route 7 all the way to its junction with 2A, a strange and rather confusing little catercornered intersection with one traffic light and a small gas station–turn right onto Route 2A, which is also Main Street, and follow it straight through until you almost come to the next set of traffic lights–the Burnham Library is a small red brick building along a green, sharing a driveway with the red brick church on one side and the big white clapboard Colchester Meeting House on its other side.

Next week, same day of the week, time and place, Robyn Chapman (cartoonist extraordinaire, CCS’s first-ever Fellow and now a full-time faculty member) will be giving a ‘Create Comics’ one-night workshop, and that’ll be amazing.

Much better than me blathering.

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“It’s What You Want, Isn’t It?” 

Back to Dean Owen’s masterwork Reptilicus (1961, Monarch Books), as surprisingly, Karen and Svend are at it again — but wait! Karen’s still fretting over whether big sis Lise might lay (claim) to the studly Svend, and…

Sunlight poured through lace curtains at the windows. “This isn’t right, Karen,” Svend told her. “This is Lise’s room.”

“But it’s why I want to do it.” Her fingernails bit into his arms. “On Lise’s bed.”

She tried to pull him down on her, but he held back. “Why do you hate her?” he demanded.

But she arched her back and her soft lively mouth was pressed against his and he forgot that he had asked a question. Soon their clothing was strewn carelessly on the floor. Again, as she had that day in the woods, she fought him with playful determination. He would press his face against her breasts and she would twist away. She tried to get off the bed and he flung her back.

For a moment she was quiet and he thought that this meant the end of her resistance. As he moved to penetrate her, she suddenly ducked out from under him. She bounded across the room, whipped open a wardrobe door. She was fumbling among racks of hanging clothes. Then she came out with a pale blue dressing gown. It was Lise’s, of course, and when she put it on, the hem dragged on the floor and the sleeves were much too long. But she held it about her and came back to the bed.

“Now you can pretend,” she whispered, “I’m Lise. It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“I do not,” he said hoarsely and tore the blue garment from her back, hurling it across the room. She came warmly against him, her frantic body making him forget Lise, forget everything.

When it was over Karen closed her hands over her breasts and looked up at him with wonder. “I am beginning to feel something, Svend,” she said brokenly. “Svend, I love you. I really love you.”

He was about to say that he loved her, but a small voice in his consciousness told him there was no point in a man’s committing himself to such an unpredictable female as this.

(Reptilicus, pp. 45-46)
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I still find the Charlton/Monarch paperbacks in used bookshops upon occasion, so copies are out there!