Ordo Bibliotheca

Librarians have an image problem. Picture a librarian. I can guarantee that the image you have in your head is a matronly woman, wearing glasses, with a bun, and a pinched look on her face. You will imagine her walking between dusty shelves, shushing patrons, and expounding on the value of the card catalog. That image is starting to change for some people but for a many it is still the idea they have. I should know. I have the librarian action figure with her advanced shushing action. That image has changed a lot in the last couple years though. The next generation of librarians is young, hip, often tattooed, and very technological. 

So when I found Rex Libris I knew that I had to share this. Rex is a librarian but he is not either a matronly woman or a hip tattooed young adult. Instead what he is an action hero. In comic book form. Rex Libris is the brain child of James Turner. He saves the world one book at a time. And he is utterly fun. 

Rex is a librarian at the Middleton Public Library. Middleton is not any ordinary library, it lays on one of the most powerful ley lines in the universe. This causes literary characters to occasionally pop out of books and overrun the library. It also allows the library to hold some of the most important books in the universe. And when they go overdue it is Rex's job to get them back. Normally he starts with friendly calls, then moves on to letters, and then he crosses the galaxy to bust heads and get books back. The first book, I Librarian, starts with Rex fighting a demonic samurai who doesn't want to get a library card to check things out. In the middle of the fight he grabs a book on demons to read up on how to defeat them. It's that type of humor. 

Turner has created the idea of the Ordo Bibliotheca, a secret society of librarians who have used the cover of docile do-gooders, to hide their true purpose of preserving all the knowledge of the world. As a librarian I've seen the Noah Wylie film which is about a librarian saving the world. But there is a huge difference between Wylie's librarian and Rex Libris. While Wylie played the character as a wussy character who was afraid of a fight but is dragged into it, Rex is a lot more willing to get his hands dirty. Circe (yes based on the ancient sorcerous) is a standard matronly older librarian, when she's not turning unruly patrons into pigs. But she's more than happy to grab a sawed off shotgun to preserve the peace against Viking invasion. 

Perhaps these books are just so fun because they poke fun at the stereotypes of librarians. Rex may talk like a gangster, he may be well skilled with a gun, and he may be willing to take on all the baddies around the galaxy, but it's all in the name of books. An action figure I can get behind. Now I'll just have to get the t-shirt. And you should check out the comic.