As the library specially ordered in a copy of Stan Lee’s How to Draw Superheroes for me, I thought that to try out his suggestions I should draw some library superheroes.
Carnegie
Troubled millionaire philanthropist Andrew Carnegie himself came to Wakefield to open the Carnegie Free Library that he funded in the city, so each episode opens with him materialising at a secret rendezvous to deliver cryptic instructions for a mission impossible that will be a real challenge even for his astonishingly talented team (so his job description is very similar to that of the current head of libraries).
At the end of each episode he appears again to round off the adventure to with a suitably wise epigram, such as ‘Knowledge is Power’, a phrase incorporated in gilded Arts and Craft lettering on the iron gates of the Carnegie Free Library in Horbury.
So how does he manage to drop in to the present day? Carnegie also funded a Institute of Technology. Unfortunately course our understanding of the space time continuum was rather limited in 1900, so in his enthusiasm to try out the steampunk prototype, built for him in Wakefield by the illustrious Victorian engineering firm, Brown’s Comptometers (it was going to be the real life Green’s Economisers, but they’re very much still in existence, and I don’t want to hear from their legal team) he’s got locked into a chronosynclastic infundibulum so his corkscrew path through space time means he’s in sync with his superhero team only at odd, but predictable, occasions.
Stax
Arcane cult knowledge? Long lost special editions? Martial-arts trained hooded mystery woman Stax is a legend down in the archives deep below the secret library headquarters in a boarded up retail store in the city centre.
Every superhero has an Achilles heel and problems in their everyday lives and for Stax it’s that she classifies her friends and family in Dewey Order.
Bookman Bold Italic
The muscle-bound action hero is Bookman Bold Italic, in real life the van driver who’s developed his strength through lugging around those heavy boxes of requests and returns.
Thanks to doing the rounds, his local knowledge is extraordinary and no-one suspects that the local cheery van driver had a double life as Bookman driving the alarmingly powerful Bookmobile on daring missions. And causing a lot of mayhem along the way.
Stampa
When you return books to headquarters library, do you ever think that checking in scanner has a life and a character all its own?
Of course it does, because when the superheroes spring into action it transforms into Stampa, the Dating Agency Droid, providing comic relief in the story but also often saving the day through its plucky and practical ingenuity.