Quarantining Coronavirus through Comics at MSU's Comic Art Collection

by Mike Rhode

Like many of us, Michigan State University librarian Randy Scott was sent to work from home when covid-19 began shutting down schools and libraries across the country. To be able to work from home, he had to get creative, since he couldn't take parts of the Comic Art Collection home with him. Scott began clipping comic strips from the Lansing, MI papers that dealt with coronavirus and setting up new subject headings in the collection's Reading Room Index (RRI).

When I checked in with him, and heard that he was doing this, I began sending the daily Washington Post comics pages (I'd been sending the Sundays for years, continuing what crack comics historian Ian Gordon had begun years ago). He's picked coronavirus as his main subject heading, noting "The first mention of the coronavirus (covid 19) pandemic appeared in this collection in the February 13, 2020 episode of Prickly City. Newspaper strips are added here when 5 examples of a title with pandemic-related content are located, clipped and filed in the Library's collection." As of today, he's collected about 600 strips, 400 of which are in the RRI, and 200 waiting to be added.

Strips he's collected include:

• Arlo & Janis (starting Mar. 30, 2020)
• Baldo (starting Apr. 4, 2020)
• Barney and Clyde (starting Mar. 4, 2020)
• Blondie (starting May 7, 2020)
• Brevity (starting Apr. 7, 2020)
• Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! (starting Apr. 6, 2020)
• Candorville (starting Mar. 23, 2020)
• Curtis (starting Mar. 30, 2020)
• Dilbert (starting Apr. 20, 2020)
• Family Circus (starting Apr. 15, 2020)
• Frank and Ernest (starting Mar. 13, 2020)
• Frazz (starting Apr. 18, 2020)
• Lio (starting Mar. 30, 2020)
• Non Sequitur (starting Mar. 9, 2020)
• Off the Mark (starting Apr. 6, 2020)
• On the Fastrack (starting Apr. 13, 2020)
• Pearls Before Swine (starting Apr. 6, 2020)
• Prickly City (starting Feb. 13, 2020)
• Reply All Lite (starting Mar. 30, 2020)
• Sally Forth (starting Apr. 13, 2020)
• Speed Bump (starting Apr. 27, 2020)

New and newly significant related topics include:

• Contagion  
• Covid 19 
• Hand Sanitizer
• Hand Washing
• Hazmat Suits
• Hoarding
• Home Schooling
• Lockdowns
• New Normal
• Quarantine
• Reopening
• Shaking Hands
• Social Distancing
• Staying Home
• Surgical Masks
• Toilet Paper
• Vaccines
• Working from Home
• Zoom

 A typical entry for a Washington, DC-based cartoonist looks like this:

Social Distancing. 
   "Boo Cat Lives and Breathes Social Distancing" (Reply All
   Lite, Apr. 26, 2020) / by Donna A. Lewis. -- Call no.:
   oversize PN6726.S79 Apr. 26, 2020 

Special collections work over the long run and most of this collection probably won't be of interest to users for a few years, and then again after a few decades, most likely for the fiftieth anniversary of the pandemic. But just a cautionary note for those who think they can find everything on the web... this Chris Ware strip from the New York Times from April 26, 2020, has disappeared from the Times' website (and Randy would like a tearsheet if you have it).

Picture from Twitter

Ryan Claytor's tour of MSU's Comic Art Collection

Regular readers know I send material to MSU's collection. However, I've never been there. Cartoonist Ryan Claytor has though, and recently filmed it his tour. Here's his email to the comix-scholar's list:

I just wanted to let everyone know that I recently posted a couple video tours of the MSU Special Collections Library (...the largest public collection of comics in the world, from my understanding).

The reason there are a couple video tours is because I was lucky enough to accompany Randy Scott to the REMOTE STORAGE FACILITY as well as the main stacks. Anyhow, if you're interested and have a few extra minutes this busy season, here is the link to the videos.

http://www.elephanteater.com/865

Many thanks to Randy Scott for taking his time to give us a look around.

Sincerely,
--
Ryan Claytor
Owner/Author/Artist
Elephant Eater Comics
Web: www.ElephantEater.com

Michigan State's comic librarian

My buddy Randy Scott is featured in "Fortress of comic-tude: Almost 40 years of collecting has left MSU with the world's largest library comic book collection," By Sarah Harbison, MSU's The State News November 4, 2008. There's also a video showing some of the collection. I regularly send MSU material and encourage you all to do so as well. Icelandic comics! Polish Tom & Jerry! (actually I think that one IS from me).

New acquistions of Michigan State's Comic Art Collection

Randy Scott, the librarian at Michigan State University's Comic Art Collection, puts online new catalogue records and new acquisitions for the collection so that a Google* search will find them (as opposed to them being buried in the dark web of the Library's catalogue). He's updated his list with new material from February through September. I find it interesting to stroll through and go "Never heard of that. Hmmm. Got that. Hmmm. Who'd want that? Hmmm...."

In February alone, we find some items of interest. Here's one by a friend of mine that Randy beat me out on when we were visiting Big Planet Comics Vienna:

Un Mode de Transport / Brian Biggs. -- Rodez : Editions de
Rouergue, 2004. -- 32 p. : all col. ill. ; 22 cm. --
(Touzazimute ; no. 18) -- A children's book. -- Call no.:
PN6727.B46M6 2004

and one from the M. Rhode clipping service, now safely filed under "pigs":

"At Least He's Not a Chauvinist"* (Postage Stamp Funnies, Jan.
10, 2008) / Shannon Wheeler. -- Summary: A woman is dating
a pig. -- Clipped from The Onion, A.V. section (Washington,
D.C.) -- Call no.: PN6726 f.B55 "pigs"

Something to make one wonder. I'll have to pull out Rob Weiner's Marvel bibliography to see what this really is:

Break the Chain! -- New York : Marvel Music, 1994- . -- ill. ;
26 cm. -- Vol. 1, no. 1 accompanied by a music cassette. --
LIBRARY HAS: v. 1, no. 1. -- Call no.: PN6728.6.M3B72

A Zapiro collection for those following the current South African controversy:

Take Two Veg and Call Me in the Morning : Cartoons from Mail &
guardian, Sunday times and Independent Newspapers / Zapiro.
-- Auckland Park, South Africa : Jacana Media, 2007. -- 160
p. : chiefly ill. ; 20 x 24 cm. -- Call no.: DT1975.Z37T3
2007

March's listing includes a bunch of comics that the DC Conspiracy donated.

And look what snuck in and was catalogued in September:

"This Hole Would Be More Interesting if it had a Windmill, a
Lava Pit and a Giant Robot with a Baseball Bat"* (Cul de
Sac, Aug. 28, 2008) / Richard Thompson. -- Call no.: PN6726
f.B55 "miniature golf"

and this:

Film & TV Adaptations of Comics / Michael Rhode & Manfred
Vogel. -- 2007 ed. -- Arlington, Va. : through Lulu.com,
2007. -- 149 p. ; 23 cm. -- Contents: Adaptations ; Live
action adapations from animation ; Films and TV shows with
superhero themes but not based on comic books ;
Cartoonist's appearances & work in movies and television ;
Documentaries & promotions ; Sources & bibliography ;
Index. -- Call no.: PN1995.9.C36R47 2007

Boy, I've got to visit there one day. In the meantime, I encourage all my readers to send their unwanted comic books, clipped strips, tearsheets about comics articles and the like to:

Randy Scott
MSU Libraries
East Lansing, MI 48824-1048


*I'm sure any search engine will work as well, but MSU uses Google to search all of its websites.

Book review: European Comics in English Translation: A Descriptive Sourcebook.

I've submitted this to the International Journal of Comic Art for the Spring 2009 issue, but I think I've got a different audience here. If not, read it twice; it's short, it won't hurt too much.

Randall W. Scott. European Comics in English Translation: A Descriptive Sourcebook. McFarland & Company , 2002. 401 pages. $75.00. ISBN-10: 0786412054; ISBN-13: 978-0786412051.

Although the comic art form is almost four hundred years old – dating reasonably to the popularity of British satirical prints in 1729 – there has been very few scholarly bibliographical works available to the average researcher. American studies have been particularly slow to follow in the footsteps of the British who began cataloguing their prints as early as 1870. American comics bibliography took approximately a century to start after the first comic art ‘golden age,’ that of editorial cartoonists, but it is growing strongly now. Randy Scott is one of the key figures in the field, having worked to build Michigan State University’s Comic Art Collection for two decades.

In this book, Scott has provided an annotated bibliography for European albums that are available in a variety of stand-alone forms in English. The bibliography is arranged by creator and all of the books listed in it are available at the MSU library. Since he does not include serials, stories from Heavy Metal magazine, which has frequently published translated material in both single and multi-issues, is not included. Given the amount of material that has appeared in Heavy Metal and nowhere else, this is an unfortunate decision, although possibly the only practical one. In spite of this, Scott lists 543 albums, along with publication information, and more impressively, plot summaries for the albums. The plot summaries mean that the book’s index can be used to find items of particular interest, such as the randomly selected “cross dressing” which is linked to six citations. As with any work of this type, some points are arguable. The genre ‘funny animal’ probably would have been a helpful index term to link to books like Benoit Sokal’s Inspector Canardo. Although his stories belong to the genre of crime fiction and are not funny at all, Canardo is a duck.

Scott also included citations for reviews when he knew of them; an example can be seen in the listing for Mattotti’s Murmer which includes listings for two reviews from The Comics Journal. Most helpful of all may be his “Author/Translator Notes & Index” which gives brief biographical information as well as references to albums cited in the book, and source material that the biographical information was found in. An example of this is:

Madsen, Frank. Danish artist, writer, and translator, born in 1962. Annotated here are Kurt Dunder in Tirol (album 299), which he wrote, drew, and translated, and Sussi Bech’s Nofret: Kiya (album 27), which he translated. Source: DANISH (i.e. Danish Comics Today, Copenhagen, 1997), p. 104-105.

This type of additional biographical information can be very useful especially since Scott’s book covers the whole continent and is not segregated by country. The sole reason this reviewer would have for not recommending the book to anyone interested in learning about comics beyond America is the cost. The list price is far beyond what a paperback volume of this length should cost.