The Four Color Media Monitor

Saginaw and Bay City News talks about Michigan State University's massive collection of comics at one of their archives, with material dating back as far as the mid-1930s, and even some 19th century prototype samples, along with plenty of foreign products:

Did you know the world’s largest publicly accessible comic book collection is in Michigan? I didn’t, until my editor pitched me the idea of visiting Michigan State University to peruse the approximately 350,000-strong cache.

The treasure trove grew from a few thousand issues at its inception in 1970.

The collection, housed within the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections, offers something rare in the world of comic preservation — the opportunity to actually handle the materials.

Visitors can access this taxpayer-funded resource by registering online and requesting specific comics at least three days before their planned visit. Upon arrival at the library, located at 366 W. Circle Drive, staff provide proper handling instructions and equip visitors with a page-turning spatula to carefully examine these historic documents.

The collection originated in 1970 through the vision of MSU Professor Russel B. Nye, a pioneer of pop culture studies who recognized comics’ cultural significance when many dismissed them as low art. Nye began with approximately 6,000 issues donated by graduating seniors, establishing what would become an internationally significant archive.

Today, the collection spans every continent except Antarctica, featuring propaganda comics from North Korea, the largest collection of Israeli comics outside Israel, and proto-comics dating to the 1860s. Current collection efforts focus on comics from throughout North and South America.

Beyond their entertainment value, comics serve as cultural artifacts that reflect their times.

I'm impressed they've shown the courage to archive Israeli comics as well in this day and age, and wonder if it includes the cartoonist Uri Fink's late 70s creation, "Sabraman". And lest we forget, many of the early creators since the 1930s were of Israeli descent, like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, of course. No doubt, it's an archive I'll one day want to see if I can visit too, though if modern comics from the Big Two are in this collection, they'd only be good for studying what modern PC propagandists turn out, and not good for entertainment and artistic value. For now, it's great the MSU is gathering only so many comics from around the world to comprise this collection for 55 years already, and it'll be interesting to see if it can continue for a few more decades and see what then can be archived within the span of a century.

Labels: Africa, dc comics, Europe and Asia, history, indie publishers, libraries, marvel comics, politics