uwishunuflickr posted a photo:

uwishunuflickr posted a photo:

John Legend.

It's a name that, when you first heard it, sounded like one of those great old rock 'n' soul monikers.

Michael T. Regan

It could've been the name of some greaser in a rockabilly band from Encino playing biker fests throughout his retirement years, or the crooner in some rhythm 'n' blues act playing Rotary Club functions long after their hits stopped coming.

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But that's not the John Legend Philadelphia knows.

Ours is pretty, elegant even. Ours is the standard-bearer of American R&B and smooth pop ballads.

That's why Sunoco Welcome America! is welcoming its former son (he lives in New York City now) back to Philly for its biggest possible venue: Fourth of July on the Parkway, fireworks to follow.

The John Legend we knew first was a University of Pennsylvania student who could be found running an a cappella vocal group named Counterparts. Or singing his own lilting folksy soul songs and silken jazz melodies at the Five Spot. Or playing piano in the window of North by Northwest. Or leading and directing the choir at the Bethel AME Church in Scranton. That's how Philadelphia knew Legend during the '90s.

Only then, he was John Stephens, not yet a Legend.

Stephens was a nice guy with long fingers, an easy smile and a quiet demeanor who could rock and could roll. The music was diverse and raw like D'Angelo without the sweat stains, or Lenny Kravitz without the Kravitz-ness.

Give a boy a comic book and he'll read it for a day. But what happens if you teach him how to make one? If he's lucky — and mighty talented — he'll grow up to be like Pete Stathis, our Book Quarterly cover illustrator and well-known Philly graphic novelist.

We approached Stathis, whose Evenfall series has just become a Webcomic (check evenfallcomic.com every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for updates), with just one request: Make up a story. Our parameters were simple — it has to be set in Philly, and it should relate, somehow, to reading.

The rest was up to Stathis, who, it turns out, is a freaking mastermind; within a week he showed up at my office bearing three sketched-out pitches (because, as he rightly points out, "Comics can't really be described adequately with words alone; they're a unique language with their own alphabet"). The concept we chose is the loosest interpretation of our must-be-about-reading rule, but we dug it because it tells a story, and lets you, dear readers, make the connection. (Plus, it's totally meta and reminds us of A-ha's "Take on Me" video.)

We're honored to display Stathis' work in our honor boxes, well, because it looks pretty sweet. But also because graphic novels don't always get their due in the lit world. That's why, along with the usual slew of fiction and nonfiction reviews in these pages, we've included a roundup of recently released graphic novels.

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It's also why our BQ feature this time around focuses on Jane Golden, Sherman Fleming and the Mural Arts Program's latest endeavor: collaborating with youth on a mural and a comic book, conceived and created by kids who've got something to say. These kids are not all that different from Stathis, who started drawing at a very young age. "I st...