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In: Collection Items, comics, newspapers, political cartoons

Antonio Prohías is best known for creating MAD Magazine‘s Spy vs. Spy. Spy vs. Spy is immediately recognizable by any age group because of its amazing minimalist yet non-reductive portrayal of political conflict. It should come as no surprise that its creator Antonio Prohías honed his skills inking political cartoons for newspapers like El Avance Criollo. We found these cartoons thanks to Will Canova, the Digital Library Center’s newspaper digitization coordinator. Will was processing El Avance Criollo and, noticing the incredibly well styled political cartoons, quickly noted that these cartoons were done by none other than Spy vs. Spy’s creator Antonio Prohías. The University ofRead More →

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In: Collection Items, comics

The press release is below, and this is great news for the many growing comics programs across the country. as we edge ever closer to critical mass for full, mainstream recognition of the importance of comics studies and collections. —– The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), Syracuse University Library has been awarded a grant of $79,440 by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to support the arrangement and description of the library’s 134 unprocessed collections of original cartoon art. The funds will help support a full-time project archivist for a period of two years. The award to Syracuse was one of six “Detailed ProcessingRead More →

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In: Academia, comics, exhibit, Library, museum

Comics studies and comics collections continue to grow, and now there’s more great news. Ohio State University’s Cartoon Research Library is acquiring the International Museum of Cartoon Art’s collection. Currently, OSU’s gallery space is small (or so this article says–I haven’t been lucky enough to see it yet, but it’s on my list of places to go as soon as I can) so OSU’s Cartoon Research Library is planning a larger gallery space to display more of their already excellent, and now growing, collection. This is great news for comics studies as a whole–it means more resources will be available in a centralized and organizedRead More →

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In: archives, comics, Digital Library

VCU Libraries have announced a full digital run of Will Eisner’s work on PS* Preventive Maintenance Magazine! Here’s their press release: VCU Libraries is honored to present these rare examples of the incomparable art work of the late Will Eisner. In an effort to encourage soldiers to keep better care of their equipment, the US Army hired Eisner’s American Visuals Corporation to do a digest-sized publication focusing on preventive maintenance. Each issue consisted of a color comic book style cover; eight pages of four color comic continuity story in the middle; and a wealth of technical, safety, and policy information printed in two color. EisnerRead More →

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In: comics, conference, exhibit

The annual University of Florida Comics Conference will be this Friday and Saturday. The conference events will be held at Emerson Alumni Hall (on University Avenue, across from the stadium) and the program is on the conference website and posted below. The keynote speakers are the incredible Phoebe Gloeckner, Gail Simone, and Sally Cruikshank. Friday, March 21st 9-10:15 AM – Panel 1: The “Body” of the Text “‘Time is a Man / Space is a Woman’: Narrative + Visual Pleasure = Gender Confusion,” Aaron Kashtan “Eggs, Birds and ‘an Hour for Lunch’: A Vision of the Grotesque Body in Clyde Fans: Book 1 by Seth,”Read More →

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In: comics

More comics collections are being added to libraries. Each time it’s wonderful news because it means more of the wonderful materials will be preserved. The most recent (at least the most recent I’ve heard of) is at the University of Minnesota, explained in this story and this story. The collection will be part of the University of Minnesota’s Children’s Literature Research Collections, which is also wonderful because so much of the history of comics and children’s literature connects in terms of illustrators, innovative designs, techniques, and more. Similarly, the University of Florida’s Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature is housed alongside the Popular Culture Collections,Read More →

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In: comics, Commons, Digital Library, imagetext, preservation

The Harvard Law School Library just announced a new digital collection highlighting crime broadsides. The collection is online here and the collection description is: “Just as programs are sold at sporting events today, broadsides–styled at the time as “Last Dying Speeches” or “Bloody Murders”–were sold to the audience that gathered to witness public executions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.” The broadsides span 1707 to 1891 and include accounts of executions for various common and uncommon crimes. Now, researchers can see both the cultural reception of sentences as well as the court documents from London’s central criminal court, the Old Bailey (the proceedings of which areRead More →

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In: Collection Items, comics, Digital Library, imagetext

The Comics Digital Collection is slowly building, and the scans of the Imagerie d’Epinal broadsheets will soon be online. While they’re still processing, they’re also online within Picasa so that others can see them even if only the smaller versions. It’s great to have rare materials added online so that others can use them and it’s even better knowing that these are only some of the many materials being added. These pictorial broadsheets known as the Imagerie d’Epinal sheets told simple tales and were made by the Imagerie Pellerin of France, and then reprinted by the Humoristic Publishing Co. in Kansas, Missouri. These are theRead More →

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In: Collection Items, comics, Digital Library

One of the major benefits of large digitization projects is that important and amazing artifacts, hidden in the archives, come to the surface and are easy to access not just by themselves but also within their overall context. One of these amazing artifacts is Droopy the Drew Field Mosquito by Harry Lampert. Harry Lampert is best known as co-creator of the DC Comics superhero The Flash. Lampert began his career at the Fleischer studios and worked on comics – including Betty Boop, Popeye, and KoKo the Clown – wrote humor comic books, worked on gag cartoons for many periodicals – including The New York Times,Read More →