The Billings Gazette from Billings, Montana • 24

CITYSTATE Friday, March 1 8, 1 994 7C The Billings Gazette Comics teenager's first love Espy plans discmissioes Caeada aboet wlieat mmm WASHINGTON (AP) Top Clinton administration officials have pledged to do something about the trade dispute over Canadian wheat and disclosed plans for another round of talks next week. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy is going to Canada on Monday to talk with his Canadian counterpart. Espy, Trade Representative Mickey Kantor and several other senior administration officials met privately for an hour Wednesday afternoon with Democratic lawmakers from North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota and Texas. "We're working hard on it. It's a serious problem," Kantor told reporters afterward.

"We've taken some steps to address it and will continue to do so." Neither Kantor nor Espy would discuss plans for next week's meeting. The negotiations have so far proved fruitless. American farmers claim that Canada depressed U.S. wheat prices by "dumping" unfairly subsidized grain in American markets after the two countries signed a free-trade agreement in the 1980s. Canada denies the allegation.

Canadian growers benefit from "unfair, unfortunate" subsidies, Kantor said. "We want (a settlement) as soon as possible. This has gone on too long. We're going to do something about it," he said. U.S.

farmers are urging the administration to impose immediate import restrictions to curb shipments of Canadian wheat and barley into the United States. The administration has refused because its authority to do that expires in July, said Sen. Kent Conrad, Other options were discussed at Wednesday's meeting, however, such as the reimposition of sanctions that were suspended in the 1970s, Conrad said. "We continue to search for ways to up the pressure," Conrad said. "What Canada needs to' know is that the pressure in this country is relentless.

It's not going to stop." The State Department and others in the Clinton administra-, tion have been resisting the trade sanctions, according to sources familiar with the deliberations. Besides Conrad, the lawmakers attending Wednesday's meeting were Sen. Byron Dorgan and Rep. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, Rep. Pat Williams of Montana, Reps.

Collin Peterson and David Minge of Minnesota, and Rep. Bill Sarpalius of Texas. Library, school to share system r7 li' 2kal Sam McMasters shows off a glossy paper with high-resolution printing technology. The covers alone are attractive to many collectors. There are hologram covers, laser-etched covers, colored-foil covers, glow-in-the-dark covers, die-cut covers and dual-image acetate covers.

Collectors handle their books very carefully. The value of a particular comic book depends on its condition, the popularity of the artist, the characters and the storyline. But most important, it depends on how many copies are printed. With anguish, McMasters recalls selling "The Incredible Hulk," No. 181, several years ago.

The scarce issue marked the debut Wolverine, who has become one of the most popular characters today's X-Men comic books. "I got it for $5, sold it for $25, and now it's worth $250 to $300 and the book's only about 15 years old," he said. "I could kick myself." But McMasters has held onto most of his X-Men collection, which he estimates is worth between $750 and $1,000. Comics-publishing giants D.C. Marvel used to have some date, 21st-century library like we should we could not do that with the funds we have available," Whalen said.

According to Parmly Library Director Bill Cochran, the Career Center's connection would serve as a model that could be ex- panded to the other 31 public school libraries. If the entire School District 2 library system is automated through a connection with Parmly, it would more than double the public library's collec- tion of 215,000 volumes. The schools would operate as branches of the public library. Currently, none of the school trict's libraries is totally automa-, ted. The interlocal agreement the City Council will consider Monday night would establish cooperative services between Parmly and the district.

It is expected to be in op-eration by April 1 Whalen said. By JIM MANN The Daily Inter Lake KALISPELL Shad Petosky doesn't just like comic books he loves them. The 19-year-old Kalispell resident loves the art, the stories, the characters, everything about them. He knows the backgrounds of characters, he can recall the values of certain issues, and he knows what's going on in dozens of comic book series. As an aspiring artist, he can tick off the names of the most revered illustrators in the comics industry, and he can elaborate on their individual styles.

Petosky is one in a growing legion of comic book fanatics. With 538 regular series due out in March, there are more comic book titles than ever before, and last summer, national sales were unprecedented. Hoping to cash in on comic book mania, Scott Ingersoll, Tony Sampson and Roger Barrett recently opened Comics Plus in downtown Kalispell, the Flathead Valley's only store dedicated exclusively to comic books and collector cards. In terms of popularity and collectibility, Ingersoll said, comic books are on the same track as sports cards. Ingersoll says half his customers are adults, and the kids who shop at the store are often serious collectors.

"It's not that uncommon for kids to come in here and drop $20 on comic books," he said. "They buy them, wait for them to go up in value, and then they trade them. I'm not so sure they're buying them to read as much as trade." Sam McMasters, 28, is one of Ingersoll's best customers. Every week, he buys up to 40 comic books at $1 to $5 apiece. McMasters holds down three jobs, a necessity when you're spending $250 to $350 a month on comic books.

He estimates that he has close to 15,000 comic books after 15 years of collecting. "Comics aren't just for kids anymore," said McMasters, who also draws his own superheroes. "Basically, it's a movie on paper. You have the images and good stories. You have comics that are still being drawn in pen and ink, but now you have a lot of comics that are being painted frame by frame." Instead of being printed on cheap paper in smudgy ink, many new comic books are produced on American iijr WITH mmmm AT flLL NO MONEY DOWN! PLUS NO of in and By JULIE FORSTER Of The Gazette Staff The city of Billings is expected to enter into an agreement to provide School District 2 with access to its computerized library catalog services.

The contract would establish cooperative library services between the Parmly Billings Library and the school district's Career Center. In addition to one-time start-up costs of $15,000, the school district would pay a yearly maintenance fee of about $900 for Dynix, the system that operates Parmly's integrated automated library system. The school district would pay for the technology and service with the money that remains from bonds that were issued in the 1970s for construction and development of the Career Center. When it comes on-line with RUSSELL ATHLETIC UNIFORMS RUSSELL I I VS. Parmly's computer system, public library patrons will also be able to use the Career Center's library and have access to materials just as they do at Parmly.

Likewise, Career Center students would have access to materials in the public library through a courier delivery service that would transport print material back and forth between buildings. District 2 would provide that service. "We could not afford to do this as a stand alone," said Career Center Principal Bob Whalen. "The cost was just prohibitive." The center provides vocational-technical education for 825 high school students; 160 are full-time. The connection will provide space on the library's integrated automated system for the bibliographic holdings of the Career Center with its 5,000 specialized volumes.

"In order to have an up-to- Youth Baseball MockTurtlenecks. 2-Button Plackets. Adult BaseballSoftball Softball Shorts Reg. Reg. Reg.

Reg. Reg. $26.99 Reg. MockTurtlenecks A 2-Button Plackets Associated Press copy of "Spawn." thing of a corner on an elite corps of superheroes. But with the emergence of small, independent comic book companies, hundreds of new heroes and villains have been created over the past few years.

The death of Superman just over a year ago proves that nobody in the world of comics is invincible anymore. "They change them all the time," Ingersoll said of comics heroes. "If they get killed or they get hurt, they have to come back better than they were before." The Man of Steel was resurrected with a cool, flowing hairdo, rather than the squiggly curl that he had worn since the 1940s. The top-selling comic book in the country is "Spawn." a series about a hellish superhero whose purpose is to redeem himself from an evil past. It is drawn by former Spiderman artist Todd McFarlane, whom Petosky describes as "the most powerful man in comics." "People give me a hard time sometimes," Petosky said.

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