Barton sometimes appeared twice in a single issue, and had created several running departments for himself — "The Inquiring Reporter," "Heroes of the Week," "The Graphic Section".
Despite this, we eventually received assurances from Borders that the book would be removed from children's sections of bookstores across the UK, US, South Africa and Australia, and placed in the adult graphic section.
The New Yorker scrapbooks show a flurry of Barton contributions in the weeks before his death, including a "Graphic Section" containing a small, prophetic cameo of a man beyond cheering up.
Or have them slaughtered: a graphic section describes a visit to the knacker's yard, which was deep in piles of bloated cows and sheep, "puddles of drying blood and bile, pools of piss … like some vast panorama of animal death by Damien Hirst".
(The gruesome video is here, posted on the Web site of The Long War Journal, which said it was sent to journalists by a Taliban spokesman. Warning: The graphic section begins at 3 50 of the video. A pixillated still photograph is here).
On the Graphics and Gaming Graphics section, it scored a 1.0 out 5 5.9.
The fashion for cosplay has seen an even more diverse crowd of comic fans attending events, and so-called "graphic novel" sections in bookshops – ghettoes for comics that are longer original works or collected into series – are one of the rare areas of the market to have grown year on year.
Neil: I've probably been in about 6-700 libraries over the years, some of them that I researched in, some of them I took my children to; a lot of them I've visited for events, for launches, for opening graphic novel sections.
However, the verbal comments accompanying the graphic elicitation section of the interview were more detailed and insightful than verbal comments accompanying the participatory diagramming section.
