Help save comics!

Although our giving page is no longer active, you can still donate. If you would like to provide any additional support, please make a gift here.

The History:

Twenty-five years ago, six semi-trucks arrived at The Ohio State University. They contained the world’s most comprehensive collection of newspaper comic strips and cartoons, featuring more than 2.5 million comic strip clippings and pages. Bill Blackbeard, a comics historian and collector, had amassed this vast and unparalleled collection in his San Francisco home starting in 1967. Bill recognized the value of studying this popular media that engaged a diverse audience of millions and that reflected and commented on our society and culture. Realizing that physical newspapers were being discarded by libraries in favor of microfilm, he understood that the black and white mircrofilm images could never be an appropriate format for preserving and studying our comic strip heritage, especially the Sunday color comics.  

In response to this need, Blackbeard embarked on a life-long mission to rescue comics material in order to preserve it for future generations. He formed a non-profit called the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art, and traveled around the country collecting newspapers that libraries were no longer able to keep. He kept many Sunday comics supplements intact, but also recruited volunteers to clip out individual daily and Sunday strips to create complete runs in chronological order by title: his goal was to collect and preserve every comic strip that had ever been published. The resulting collection, documenting more than a century of newspaper comic strips, is unique and could never be recreated today. Many of the works Blackbeard preserved are the last surviving copies of their kind. 

In the late 1990s, Blackbeard lost the lease on his home in San Francisco where he housed his massive collection. The material was once again at risk. Ohio State’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum (BICLM) stepped in to save the collection. Seventy-five tons featuring more than 2.5 million comic strip clippings and pages along with related material filled six semi-trucks that made their way from San Francisco to Columbus, Ohio in late 1997.  

This collection contains the graphic art of thousands of artists, including such luminaries as Winsor McCay, George Herriman, Nell Brinkley, Lyonel Feininger, Frank King, Milton Caniff, Edwina Dumm, Hal Foster, Walt Kelly, and Charles Schulz, as well as many whose work has not received the appreciation and critical attention it deserves because of the lack of access. The collection also includes incredibly rare copies of the Chicago Defender, one of the definitive Black Press newspapers. It is imperative that we rehouse and catalog this historically and artistically-significant collection so that broad public access can be provided for exhibitions, for research, and for teaching. Creating access to these irreplaceable source materials and artistic commentaries on the social, political, and cultural happenings across time will offer unique insights to researchers while inspiring diverse, broad audiences for generations to come. Thanks to Bill Blackbeard’s collection, BICLM is the only place in the world where much of this material can be studied, and we can only imagine what discoveries remain in the thousands of uncatalogued boxes. We need your help!

As a thank you for your donation, we have put together some fun (and even unusual) perks at different giving levels! 

World of Books

World of Books T-Shirt

World of Books Tote Bag 

Collection Print Options:

Dimples Day Dream 1928

Gasoline Alley 1923

Naughty Pete 1913

Krazy Kat 1918