Who's Who of American Comic Books
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ISSN: 1544-9548 WINTER 2008 • Special Collections holds the papers Vol. 5, No. 1 and published works of three Pulitizer Prize winning authors: Russel B. Nye (1945), Robert Coles (1973), and Richard Ford (1996). • While Special Collections does not loan books, last year it received over 900 interlibrary loan requests of which 560 could be filled by copying materials electronically. Almost all of the filled requests were for magazine articles or small pamphlets from our popular culture Who’s Who of and radicalism collections. American Comic Books • Dan Gerber has donated his manuscripts and papers to Special Archive joins the Comic Art Collection Collections as part of the Michigan Writers Collection. Gerber, a graduate MSU’s renowned Comic Art Collection negatives of his amazing personal microfilm of MSU, is an award winning poet, is now home to the archive of library of golden age comic books. These novelist, and essayist. His latest work, A questionnaires and correspondence used 350 reels hold about 7,000 comic Second Life, A Collected Non-Fiction, to compile the Who’s Who of American books from the 1940s, and all are now is published by the Michigan State Comic Books. The Who’s Who was listed in our online catalog. Both of these University Press. created by Jerry Bails, a popular faculty remarkable collections are available for member at Wayne State University, consultation now, and are dedicated to • Special Collections has acquired one affectionately remembered as “the father helping future researchers build on the of the artists’ books from the Guild of of comic book fandom.” massive accomplishments of Dr. Jerry G. Book Workers 100th Anniversary show. Bails. Reliquiae: An Abecedarium of Martyred First published in the 1970s, the Saints, by the book artist Karen Jutzi Who’s Who immediately became a key – Randall W. Scott, Comic Art will be added to the growing Book Arts reference work for the study of comic Bibliographer collection for use by book arts classes in books. Bails continued to update the the new Residential College in the Arts directory for more than 30 years, until and Humanities. his death in 2006, and it was his intention that the primary source material • In spring 2007, MSU undergraduate associated with the Who’s Who become Robin Roots won first place in the part of MSU’s Comic Art collection. annual MSU Student Book Collection The archive includes the original Competition for her collection, Picture handwritten questionnaires submitted by Books for Peace and Social Justice. hundreds of artists, writers, and editors, In addition to winning $500, Robin correspondence between Bails and was automatically entered in a national comic art creators, art samples and press collegiate book collecting contest clippings. sponsored by Fine Books & Collections Magazine. Along with the Who’s Who archive, MSU has received many hundreds of Jerry Bails’ books and comic art fanzines, plus a working set and the master Later in the year, Special Collections Celebrating the Art hosted “The Book of Origins: A Survey of American Fine Binding,” showing of the Book the work of ten U.S. binders who participated in the exhibit “Le Livre des The fusion of word and image – literature Origines.” Organized by the French and the visual arts – came to life in two Canadian bookbinding society Les Amis recent exhibits in Special Collections: de la Reliure d’Art du Canada, this the Guild of Book Workers’ 100th international exhibit featured a “set piece,” Anniversary Exhibition, and an exhibit of meaning all participants bound the same American fine binding called “The Book book: a fine press printing of the Native of Origins.” American Huron tribe’s origin myth. The exhibit displayed a rich array of artistic Ranging from the traditional to the interpretations of this single literary text. avant garde, the works in both exhibits challenged viewers to see books not The “Survey” exhibit was also a merely as vessels of knowledge, but as art homecoming for one of the works: objects worthy of study and appreciation. Special Collections owns a copy of the The emphasis on master craftsmanship Book of Origins bound by conservator elevates the physical manifestation of a Eric Alstrom. literary work to the same realm as the literature itself. Both exhibits have catalogs available online: The Guild of Book Workers’ The Guild of Book Workers’ 100th 100th Anniversary Exhibition can be Anniversary Exhibition featured more found at <http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/ than 60 bindings, all created by Guild byorg/gbw/gallery/100anniversary/index. members and ranging from traditional fine shtml>. The Survey can be found at bindings in full leather with gold tooling <http://library.syr.edu/digital/exhibits/b/ and gilt edges, to more sculptural works bookoforigins>. in the shape of crowns and bird’s nests. All invited the reader to interact with – Eric Alstrom. Library Conservator the book, whether through the tactile pleasure of turning pages, the visual puzzle of examining multiple layers, or the creative act of using slotted tiles to build Headbanded Strip (created in 2004) by Susan towers of words. Joy Share, was among the works featured in the Guild of Book Workers’ 100th Anniversary Exhibition. Photo by David Broda (Syracuse University Photo and Imaging Center). Supporting African Democracy and Freedom Special Collections is the home for • the American Coordinating Committee MSU’s new African Activist Archive, for Equality in Sport and Society a project of the African Studies Center. • the Boston Coalition for the Liberation Dedicated to preserving the history of of Southern Africa activism in support of African struggles • Educators Against Racism and against colonialism and apartheid, the Apartheid archive will preserve organizational • the Seattle Coalition Against Apartheid records, personal papers, photographs, as well as the personal papers of Mary oral histories, and ephemera such as Louise Hooper, an American Quaker posters and buttons. who served in the 1950s as personal secretary to Albert Luthuli, President From the 1960s through the 1980s, of the African National Congress and hundreds of organizations and individuals winner of the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize. around the world mounted protests of apartheid and advocated economic The African Activist Archive Project sanctions against South Africa. In East website (www.africanactivist.msu.edu) Lansing, the Southern Africa Liberation provides a directory listing archives in Committee lobbied the East Lansing City depository institutions in the U.S. and Council, the MSU Board of Trustees, abroad and an expanding collection of the MSU Foundation, and the Michigan multimedia materials documenting the Legislature for divestiture of holdings from African solidarity movement, including companies operating in South Africa. The buttons, posters, photos, written (and Patricia L. Beeman SALC Collection, soon video) remembrances. housed in Special Collections, details the activities of this organization. For more information or to help with the project contact: David Wiley (wiley@ With the establishment of the African msu.edu) or Project Director Richard Activist Archive, MSU Special Knight, ([email protected]). To enquire Collections has received the records of about recently received library collections several other organizations, including: contact: Peter Limb ([email protected]) 517-432-6123 ext. 239. — Peter Limb, Africana Bibliographer Top: a letter from African National Congress president Oliver Tambo to a young correspondent. Bottom: children in a New York City public school perform a play about apartheid in the early 1990s. Both from the Educators Against Racism and Apartheid Archive. Though the majority of items relate to New: The Latino Film Collection American film and television, the Latino Film Collection also has examples of Expanding Cultural Studies at MSU Cuban, Mexican, and South American films, and ephemera from Britain, Italy, Students of film and Chicano and Latino The collection also provides significant Mexico, Cuba, and East Germany. history now have a major new resource insights into the treatment of Latino For more information about the Latino at the MSU Libraries: the Latino Film characters in film and television as it Film Collection, please contact Diana Collection. This unique archive of rare has evolved over the decades. Early Rivera, the library’s specialist in Ethnic ephemera dating back to the 1916 silent films portrayed Latino characters almost Studies, at [email protected] or film era includes nearly 600 scripts, exclusively as Mexican, often using 517-432-6123 x252. lobby cards, photoplay editions, press negative stereotypes. In the silent era, books and press kits. for example, actresses like Lupe Velez —Diana Rivera, Ethnic Studies Librarian and Dolores Del Rio were often cast as The Collection offers researchers an “Mexican spitfires” or sultry seductresses. unmatched opportunity to examine how In the 1930s and early 1940s, stars like Latinos – the descendents of Latin Cesar Romero and Carmen Miranda often American immigrants to the US – and portrayed characters in lighter comedies Mexican Americans have been portrayed and musicals, and after World War II, a in American films over the past 90 years. new generation of Latino actors emerged Scholars of gender studies, cinema, to wider recognition, including Ricardo ethnic and Latin American studies, and Montalban and Fernando Lamas. American history and culture will all find valuable primary resource material here. The collection focuses on American-made films with Latino characters, and includes the full range of roles played by the great Latino movie stars, including Rita Hayworth, Anthony Quinn, Lupe Velez, Cesar Romero and Duncan Reynaldo. Colorful vintage movie posters are part of the rich holdings of the new Latino Film Collection..