COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY STATEMENT
Subject: Comic Art Collection
Written by: Randy Scott
Draft date: October 21, 2013
The Comic Art Collection is a research collection with a national
and international patronage of scholars and publishers. The
materials have proved to have incidental value to MSU curricula
primarily in undergraduate studies in advertising, communication,
animation, art, and English. The collection and its continuance
are based on the premise that comics are an important but
inadequately researched twentieth-century entertainment and
communications medium.
The Comic Art Collection was begun in 1970, by Professor Russel
Nye, as part of the collection now called the Russel B. Nye Popular
Culture Collection. The comics are currently the largest and
fastest-growing special collection at the MSU Libraries. There are
currently over 250,000 cataloged items in the collection.
The four main strengths of the collection are: U.S. comic books; European comic books;
U.S. newspaper strips; and history and criticism of comics. Less
extensive, or sample, collections are also maintained in the
following areas: African, Asian and Latin American comics; fotonovelas; animation;
cartooning; Big Little Books; comics tie-ins; other works by comic
personnel; and newspaper clippings. One publisher archive, the
"Eclipse Deadfiles," is maintained.
It is likely that the need for this collection will increase
steadily as remote users, who already need the materials, discover
that it exists. It is equally likely that local users, both
students and faculty, will continue to discover or be shown
potential uses for the collection. Publishing of comics and works
about comics has accelerated since 1970.
Only the Library of Congress, with a reported 100,000 comic books,
has a similar, publicly available collection. In our neighboring
states, a major collection at Bowling Green State University
numbers about 35,000 comic books, and significant, but much
smaller, collections exist at Ohio State University, Indiana
University, Kent State University, Northwestern University,
University of Chicago, and the State Historical Society of
Wisconsin.
Newspaper comics began with the "Yellow Kid" in 1895; comic books
began with Famous Funnies no.l in 1934. However, we do actively
collect a pre-history of comics, and thus we include, for examples,
early works on caricature, illustration, or woodcut storytelling.
The emphasis is on graphic storytelling wherever it may be found.
The four major and nine minor collecting areas are approached at
varying intensities as listed here:
1. Comic Books of the United States
The American comic book collection includes 200,000 comic books
of every kind, including superhero, war, underground, funny
animal, new wave, and over 5,000 from the 1940's. In
addition, the Library holds about 4,000 issues on black-white-
microfilm. Most newly published comic books are being
routinely acquired through donation. Estimates lead us to believe
that we own more than half of what could be included in a perfect
collection of American comic books. As it stands,
few of the longer runs are complete, and the missing issues
are usually the older ones. Because of the fragility and
great expense of most of these items, we are not actively
purchasing originals. The limited microfilm available
has been purchased instead, and donations of older comic books
are regularly received. To have a comprehensive collection of
U.S. comic books is not a short-term goal of the collection,
although the possibility is being kept in mind against the day
when microfilm or other good-quality stable formats become
available.
2. European Comic Book Collection
A collection of 11,000 comic books and albums was purchased in 1995. With this
addition the Michigan State University Libraries established the most nearly comprehensive collection of European comics in any Western Hemisphere library. Continued acquisition of European comics is planned with the intent being to maintain representation of all artists and nationalities.
3. Comic Strips of the United States
The comic strip collection includes a partial set of King
Features Syndicate proof sheets, about 3 million strips, and
over 500 scrapbooks of clipped newspaper strips dating from
the 1920's into the 1980's. An effort is being made to purchase
every book that has collected and
reprinted comic strips in the English language. This
collection cannot be termed comprehensive, because what is
available in book form is only a small fraction, probably less
than ten percent, of what has been published. We do not
collect original art for comic strips. A collection of
clipped comic strips is arranged by topic and keyword.
4. History and Criticism: Books and Serials about Comics
This collection includes, or intends to include, all serious
or significant separately-published works about comic books or
strips, in whatever languages they can be obtained, with a
preference for English language editions if a choice is
available. This practice began in 1987 with the realization
that the existing collection was already probably the best in
existence. Materials that were published before 1987 and are
now out-of-print are being sought. Although monographic
history and criticism of comics is routinely ordered from
foreign sources, serial subscriptions are entered on a sample
basis only.
5. Asian, African and Latin American Comics
Comic books from outside the U.S. and Europe are collected with the
intent to represent the available body of material. Comics
are rapidly developing into an international medium, so that
more translations are available in English every year. Most
of these translations are acquired through purchase or
donation. Newsstand comic books from other countries are
obtained through donations by publishers and correspondence
with foreign collectors, as well as by asking staff and
faculty to pick up samples when traveling. Monographic
history and criticism, and occasional reprint volumes, are
ordered through normal library channels.
6. Fotonovelas
Fotonovelas are a medium similar to comic books, with narratives constructed by applying word balloons to photographs. Fotonovelas are an important medium in Latin America, Southern Europe, and Northern Africa. Since there are no research collections anywhere that we know of, and since they are so similar to comic books, we have been asking travelers to bring us samples. These trickle in at the rate of about six per year, which scarcely represents a medium that must number millions of items published in several languages each year. Even at this rate, however, we are building the biggest research collection that we know of. Educational fotonovelas are a sub-category of interest that we are encouraging publishers to deposit with us.
7. Animation
Materials about animation are included in the Comic Art
Collection because creative personnel and fictional characters
tend to overlap between the comics and animation industries,
and because books about animation tend to be attractive and are often stolen or defaced if allowed to circulate. These
materials are well used by undergraduates and an effort has
been made to secure the best published reference books and
monographic material and sample issues of serials.
8. Cartooning
An effort is continuing to collect all materials that treat
cartooning in the context of comic books or strips, there are
not many of these. Non-comics cartooning books are kept if they have been donated,
since this is a related topic and is of interest to some of
our users.
9. Comics Tie-Ins
When a comic book or strip generates a movie, there are likely
to be thousands of licensed items (calendars, coloring books,
posters, ink blotters, novelizations, lapel buttons, neckties,
t-shirts, etc.) that are related. Even less prominent comic
books and strips sometimes have success in licensing. Such
items are always accepted when offered as gifts, and are
purchased very selectively, in order to have available a
representative selection of the kinds of objects that have
been produced. Catalogs and other reference works that list
these items are purchased.
10. Other Works by Comics Personnel
Comics writers, artists, editors, and publishers often work in
other fields, for example writing novels or other books, or
illustrating books. Works in other media by people whose
primary career identification is comics are always accepted as
gifts and are purchased whenever found at unobjectionable
prices. Research on any comics professional is not complete
without reference to non-comics work, and bibliographies are
available for very few of these people. By collecting these
materials we are providing a collection that is available
nowhere else.
11. Newspaper and Other Clippings Files
An extensive vertical file is kept including clippings,
advertising material, greeting cards, work samples, and
miscellanea relating to persons, titles, and topics.
Advertising items come from comics shops and from publishers.
Because the files are cataloged in our online catalog, they are sometimes
requested by remote users.
12. Eclipse Deadfiles Archive
For every comic book published by Eclipse Comics, the Library
has received a large envelope typically containing one or more
pre-publication forms of the work. Each envelope includes
one, some, or all of the following: Original and edited
scripts; photocopies of the pencilled art; Photocopies of the
inked pages; and correspondence between the editor and the
other creative personnel. Many of these files illustrate in
depth the process of publishing a comic book from the
publisher's perspective. Although these are unique materials and
there is a file for every Eclipse Comic Book, some of the
files are very thin and Eclipse was only one (although the
fourth or fifth largest) publisher in a field of dozens. The
Deadfiles are not therefore comprehensive in any fashion and
cannot be counted on to supply any particular kind of
information about any particular comic book. They do function
as support materials for work about the creation of comic
books, about Eclipse as a publisher, or about the people who
worked for Eclipse.
All items printed on newsprint or in mimeo or ditto are kept in
duplicate if second copies are donated. This reduces wear on
fragile materials, and provides insurance against badly printed
pages or pages with clipped coupons. We keep the comic books out
of the light and away from acidic materials as much as possible,
using acid-free envelopes and mylar sleeves as appropriate. Each
comic book is stamped with an ownership stamp to make recovery more
possible in case of theft. We maintain a website for the
collection, which includes indexing of selected materials.
In the long run, we see ourselves as having a responsibility to
preserve the content of our collection whether the fragile physical
formats can be maintained or not. We have been and will continue
to investigate preservation both by deacidification and by
reproduction in other formats.