My big surprise at the Hanover Park Branch

...was these!  I have long appreciated how the Schaumburg Township District Library has kept a long-running subscription to these magazines for their YA area, even though these magazines are clearly not YA-oriented. What I didn't know until yesterday was that the branch had copies of these too!

For those who aren't familiar with them, these magazines are published by Twomorrow and -- despite the cover art -- they are not comic books; they are about comic books. Alter Ego tends to be about the Golden Age of comics back in the '40s. Back Issue tends to cover the '70s-'80s. Comic Book Creator is about, well, creators who could have been active during any period of comic book history; the issue shown here depicts Wally Wood, who was a big name in comics in the '50s and '60s. These magazines are for any adult with a serious nostalgic hankering for the comic books they grew up with, or anyone who just wants to understand comic books and their history.  They are amazing reads, and I am going to get to read all five of these for free, thanks to STDL.

Well...all of them for free, except for that issue of Back Issue in the middle. I was reading it this morning, when one of our cats knocked over a vase of flowers on the table and spilled water all over it.  Sigh...