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https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2023/10/history-in-ink-preserving-the-worlds-largest-cartoon-and-comic-collection/>
"A stop at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum is like paying a visit
to old friends. Hanging on the museum walls are huge framed cartoons of Lucy
tormenting Charlie Brown, Beetle Bailey working his way under Sarge’s skin, and
Hobbes crouching under Calvin’s school desk, whispering that the sum of 7 + 3
is 73.
In adjacent display cases, you’ll also find a
Steve Canyon lunchbox, a
Little Orphan Annie board game and decoder ring, and B. Kliban cat hats. Pull
out some drawers beneath them to find copies of
Mad magazine, a
Captain
Marvel comic book, and a cartoon correspondence course complete with a “Gag
Master Wheel.” In yet another case, editorial cartoons of the 19th-century
master Thomas Nast show how he created the elephant as the symbol of the
Republican Party.
There’s no telling what treasures you’ll uncover at this unique institution
located on the campus of The Ohio State University in Columbus. Quite simply,
it’s the largest repository of cartoon art in the world, with 300,000 original
cartoons, 45,000 books, 67,000 serials and comic books, and a whopping 2.5
million comic strip clippings. Name any cartoonist, even ones that aren’t
widely known, and the vast collection will almost surely have representative
samples of their artwork. And in some cases, BICLM has the entirety of the
artist’s work, including the collections of Milton Caniff (
Steve Canyon and
Terry and the Pirates), Walt Kelly (
Pogo), and Bill Watterson (
Calvin and
Hobbes). Huge holdings of underground comic books and even Japanese manga are
also among BICLM’s treasures.
Named for a beloved local cartoonist at the Columbus Dispatch, BICLM begins
with the assumption that cartoons are an art form worthy of serious study. And
in fact, scholars from all over the world beat a path to Columbus to browse the
collections as they work on books or dissertations. Caitlin McGurk, curator of
comics and cartoon art at BICLM and an associate professor at Ohio State, has
seen researchers dig deep looking for trends in humor over the decades or to
find how women have been treated in the comics or how fashion has changed over
time."
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
