Friday, August 5, 2011
Comic Art Collection
One of the publications that made me feel right at home and not so isolated when I began organizing the Washington State University comix collection in the early 1980s was a periodical called Comic Art Collection.
Edited by my fellow librarian Randy Scott, this was "a newsletter from the Russel B. Nye Popular Culture Collection" at Michigan State University. I was able to point to the existence of this serial as confirmation to my nervous WSU fellow faculty as proof comix were a valuable part of the human experience and worth preserving.
MSU was a real beacon of hope for me back then, and Randy, whether he knew it or not, was something of a professional role model for me.
The publication ran from 1979 to 1992, then changed title to Comic Art Studies. I drew Morty for the Feb. 2, 1985 issue, and wrote a short piece for the August 1988 issue.
Randy, also known as Randall W. Scott, has written several books about comic art librarianship and cataloging.