Listed as one the top murals festivals in the world by Smithsonian Magazine, Detroit’s Annual Murals in the Market Festival is an incredible collection of street art and a must-experience event for both residents and visitors.
Thanks to Murals in the Market, Detroit’s Eastern Market neighborhood is one of the top hotspots for street art graffiti and murals in the USA, featuring over 150+ murals and other works of art.
1xRUN (one-time run) is a Detroit-based fine arts publisher and they created Murals in the Market. They are helping to bring 50+ local and international artists to Murals in the Market.
This year’s festival is expected to attract tens of thousands of attendees.
*Special Thank You to Lauren Rautiola, our Detroit Bookfest Project Manager, for designing our flyers!*
The 4th Annual Detroit Festival of Books (aka: Detroit Bookfest) is a glorious day of BOOKS, vinyl records, comics, creative arts, food, beer, funk music and more!
Please join us at Eastern Market Shed 3 in Detroit on Sunday, July 19th, 2020.
The event is FREE for attendees! There will be an estimated 10,000+ attendees.
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
One of the world’s great bookstores sits in the Tremont West neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.
Zubal Books has over 3,000,000+ books. It’s a solid operation packed to the brim.
If a standard book is around 300 pages long, that’s 900 million pages on average, thus, almost one billion pages are represented here. That is a fantastically staggering stockpile of the printed word. On a clear day you can read forever.
Zubal’s maze-like hallways are lined with books, containing a supply of brainfood even Methuselah or Henry Bemis would find seemingly inexhaustible.
At the center of this book-tsunami are the Zubals, a bookselling family of Ukrainian heritage.
The patriarch, John Zubal, started selling books in 1961 out of the family’s house in Parma, Ohio. In 1973, they moved to their present location, which is a complex of large buildings.
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
His wife Marilyn and sons Michael and Tom work here, along with his grandchildren. They’re an entrepreneurial family with decades of experience and rare expertise.
This skilled family has been passing down the book trade for generations, helping to enrich the world by supplying books to millions of customers. Yes, they’ve found their niche.
Eldest son, Michael Zubal, is one of the current heads of operations and he’s been kind enough to give me the grand and delightfully disorienting tour where your head is spinning with books by the end, there’s so many.
Aside from being a book hunter with an eagle eye for quality books, one of Michael’s secret weapons is his excellent memory and quick recall for obscure facts and figures and remembering which books are shelved where without having to consult the database.
Zubal’s is a well-oiled machine where everything is shelved by unit number and Michael & family are always on the go, filling up the outbound table with domestic and international orders and zipping around the store.
In 1998, Zubal Books closed to the public. For the past twenty years, they have sold primarily online and by appointment-only.
Touring the Zubal’s Spread with Michael Zubal
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“We were just on the West Coast for a week and bought 3,000 books. Then I went to Geneva, Switzerland to hang out with my son. I was surprised to find that Geneva is far more Parisian than Germanic. Also, our perch tastes sweeter here. Anyway, I think the jet lag and time changes have scrambled the circuits in my brain, I’m still re-adjusting.”
“The total square footage of our operation here at Zubal Books is about 360,000-square feet.”
“Our 60,000-square foot four-story main building was built in 1925. It was a Cleveland Public Schools textbook repository, then a Lutheran publishing company for a brief period. There’s a massive freight elevator here and thousands of old wooden pear crates we use as shelving.”
“On top of the main building is a perfectly preserved circa 1954 apartment we call The Penthouse.”
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“The Penthouse has great views of the downtown Cleveland skyline and everything in here is from the 1950’s and in spookily immaculate condition (ie: furniture, appliances, grasscloth wallpaper, 3-sided fireplace, snail patterned tiles, etc.). It’s like stepping back in time. Anthony Bourdain visited us in 2007 and this was his favorite room. It would also make a great movie location. Every Friday after Thanksgiving, we play poker up here.”
“In addition to our main building, we have some attached annex buildings. One is from the 1890’s, it was previously attached to an old greenhouse. One of our recent (1978) additions has steel grating floors so you can see three stories below you. Another building features an old speakeasy with an in-wall pocket picnic table that folds out.”
“Then, a few hundred feet down the street, we have the 300,000-square foot old Hostess Twinkie factory, which has cavernous rooms filled with shrink-wrapped pallets of books that need to be processed (ie: priced, catalogued and databased). Hostess closed the factory in 1989 and we acquired it in 1994. It took us five years to hunt down the property owner. Real estate attorneys did title searches. Turned out it was a corporation in St. Louis that owned it. They accepted our first offer without hesitation.”
“Prior to 1973, we had 5,000 books at our home in Parma, Ohio and about 5,000 journals and periodicals in our basement, garage and breezeway. We also had five small storage areas around town in sheds, converted garages, storefronts, etc. We even built a pully lift to transport books to and from the second floor in one warehouse. Finally, in 1973 we consolidated everything into this property and our operations have been here ever since.”
The Focus of Zubal’s
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“On average, we sell around 250,000 books per year. We specialize in academic, scholarly, obscure, out-of-print, first editions, sci-fi and technology.”
“We also deal a lot in physics, mathematics, history, art, philosophy, signed books, chemistry, engineering, occult, collectible bindings (Easton Press, Franklin Press, etc.), anthropology, and theology.”
“Our biggest customer segments are academia, scholars, post doc students, PhD researchers, think tanks, universities, and finnicky collectors.”
“Acquisitions librarians working on collection development at universities also contact us.”
“In terms of buying books, we frequently get calls from academics approaching retirement and estates will call us before holding public sales.”
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“What I personally really enjoy handling and researching are Modern Literature books from 1920’s-1960’s. Prohibition Era to the Hippies.”
“The concentrations I specialize in are math and physics. I’m constantly boning up on bibliographies, histories and genealogies of modern physics. We deal with a lot of physicists and mathematicians.”
“My father is a trained historian. He almost became a PhD, but he didn’t want to be in academia, he wanted to sell books full-time. He instilled pride in us on efficiency and discretion doing deals.”
“We also have a store of around 2,500 books inside the main building that people can visit. It’s a random assortment of clean, mostly modern books spanning a range of different topics.”
“For various reasons, I haven’t had a Book Scout for over six years. We had a regular Book Scout for twenty years prior to that. One day we sat down and analyzed the results. We were ultimately disappointed at his pricing scheme. It was not justifying our continued relationship with him. Smart guy though, great eye, he does the rounds.”
Michael on the Book Business
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“The book business, like every business, has peaks and valleys. The labor involved is tough. Books are usually on the second floor of houses. The hauling and processing can be very time-consuming. I’ll see a load of books someone inherited, and they just want the books to find a good home. Sometimes there’s so much stuff that no money is exchanged because the values are moderate to low and they just want someone to haul the books away.”
“Right now, we have about 300,000 books listed online. Our main platforms are Amazon, AbeBooks, the Zubal website, then all the other websites we list on. We do hourly updates on all the site so that sold books are removed as quickly as possible.”
“Back in 1998, Dick Weatherford’s company Interloc (which later became Alibris) approached us. We started listing on Interloc, selling 1-2 books per day. Then AbeBooks followed, then shortly thereafter, Amazon.”
“When we became an Amazon lister, I would talk almost daily with Tiffany Linnes at Amazon. She worked directly for Jeff Bezos, that’s how small they were at the time. Since then, Amazon has acquired AbeBooks and owns it.”
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“Prior to 1998, catalogs were our primary source of sales. Once the internet hit, we immediately realized it was a viable medium. We closed our physical store to the public after reviewing our inventory control methods. We found listing by subject matter was irrelevant. We buy and sell internationally, daily, and routing books to their proper location is incredibly time-consuming.”
“How do we choose what to list online? There’s no real method. On occasion, I’ll get a collection on consignment, which jumps to the front. Currently, I’ve been working on Engineering books. We spend a lot of time working with physics, math, engineering books.”
“In terms of collectors, we don’t see completists anymore. Most people these days want specific titles versus wanting everything by a particular author.”
“Occasionally, we sell items via Heritage Auctions in Dallas. We sell maybe a dozen high-end items per year through there. We sold a Batman # 1 (1940) comic book through Heritage. It had no rear cover and still went for $8,500.”
Quick Bio of Michael Zubal
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“My father’s grandparents were from a farming village near Lvov, Ukraine, which is now in Poland, thanks to Stalin. They were hard workers who came here to work in the steel mills.”
“I’ve been working with my dad in the book business for as long as I can remember. At six years old, I was working as a kid on Saturday’s. My older sister and I would haul and stock and shelve books for him. We traveled all over to Chicago, Philly, Washington, New York, etc. My dad would do the deals and I’d come along to help move stuff. Being fully immersed in the book world my whole life is kind of an oddity. Because of this, at a very early age, I found I had a more advanced worldview than my contemporaries.”
“I did my first big deal when I was 18 at MOMA in NYC. I was buying books. Then I turned around and sold what I bought to a college. From that moment it was game-on.”
“I was also a state-licensed auctioneer for a little while. The auctions were quite popular, especially in the pre-internet days. We’d have 40-50 bidders in house and the auctions were fun.”
“When I’m not working on books, I’m playing bass in my jazz band, Slap Quartet. My brother Tom is also in the band, he plays guitar. We have another guitarist and a drummer. The name of our band came from dad. He said rock was a short-lived anthropological phenomenon (SLAP). We modified it to Simply Love All People. Been playing since I was 14 years old. We do mainly 50’s-60’s bop. My big influences are Miles, Monk, Coltrane and Mingus. I play a 5-string electric and an acoustic upright bass.”
Most books Zubal’s has ever acquired at once
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“The most books we’ve ever acquired at once were 85,000 books from the Museum of the American Indian Library in the Bronx, which was created by Archer Huntington.”
“It was a collection of Anthropology, Americana, Western, and American Ethnography. They sold it to Cornell University, which only kept 1,000 of the rarest volumes. Then Cornell called us. We ordered three semi-trucks and eight of us went down there. The eight of us loaded the trucks in two days.”
“Two months ago, I went to a house in upstate New York and pulled out 2,000 books myself from the second floor. Couple whiskies later that night, I was fine.”
Selling and Renting Bulk Books
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“1,000 books or more is considered bulk. We sell and rent bulk books mostly to movie studios, hotels, interior designers. Sometimes they just want certain color bindings to match the color scheme of a room or they’ll say things like ‘we need twelve-feet of books from the 18th century.’”
“Our books are appearing in the TV show Succession in the upcoming episode where the characters go to Hungary.”
“We even help outfit booksellers who are just starting out in their careers with bulk amounts of books.”
“Also, we pulp poor quality books all the time. Fortunately, there’s a pulping facility three blocks from us.”
The Zubal Vault
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“We have an off-site vault of especially rare and favorite books.”
An example of some items from the vault:
– 1st edition Wizard of Oz (1900) $450,000; pristine like-new condition.
– Alice in Wonderland illustrated by Salvador Dali (1969) massive folio where each plate is signed by Dali.
– Boccaccio’s Decameron on vellum. It’s only one of three copies in existence. The binding and even the pages are vellum. The book was created around 1899 and is a modern work of art.
– Common Sense (1776) Thomas Paine. At around $250,000, it’s the most expensive book Zubal’s has listed online.
Final Thoughts for Now
Michael Zubal @ Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“One thing I absolutely love about the book business is the thrill of the hunt. Never fully knowing what sort of treasures you’re going to discover.”
“As booksellers, we must have a keen eye, know the material and be discerning. You have to know what you’re handling and the quality.”
“My dad is 80. My parents are gonna keep on going at it here. Will I be here when I’m 80? Hard to say.”
“As for customers and visitors, we do encourage people to email us their Want Lists. We will keep these on file and let you know if your book comes in. Also, I’m happy to give tours. They typically run 1 hour and 30 minutes. You need to email us in advance so we can set a day and time.”
“I love the city of Cleveland. We’re currently seeing an explosion of new upscale housing in the city, which for the past 40 years was unheard of. The food scene is surprisingly complex and interesting. The art scene, especially the Cleveland Museum of Art, is fantastic. The people of Cleveland are generally friendly, helpful, laidback and polite.”
“My brother and I have been in the book business for 40 years. After doing something for so long, you should get good at it. We were happily born into the trade. It’s a bonus in life to have a job where you handle the printed word daily.”
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books 2969 West 25th Street Cleveland, Ohio 44113
Ryan’s Top 3 Things to Experience in Cleveland after visiting Zubal’s
Slyman’s Deli (3106 St. Clair NE) open Monday-Friday 6am-2pm; 216-621-3760; get the corned beef sandwich on rye with swiss, toasted, with 1000 island, mustard, mayo.
Slyman’s Deli in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Slyman’s Deli in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
West Side Market(1979 W. 25th Street) open daily 7am-4pm; 30,000-square foot market of food vendors built in 1912 with a 130-foot tall clock tower. If you see them, try the cotton candy grapes.
West Side Market in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
West Side Market in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Garfield Memorial @ Lakeview Cemetery (12316 Euclid Avenue) 285-acre rural garden-style cemetery founded in 1869; John D. Rockefeller and Eliot Ness are buried here along with U.S. President James A. Garfield. Check out the Garfield Memorial. Open April-November from 9am-4pm, it’s a 180-foot tall 3-story monument. The coffins of Garfield (who was assassinated in 1881) and his wife are in the lower level.
Garfield Memorial @ Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Garfield Memorial @ Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Honorable Mentions:
Edgewater Beach (7600 Cleveland Memorial Shoreway) free, public beach; there’s also a greenspace, fishing pier and concession’s building; 11am-9pm concessions, 3pm-8pm bar; this area is located next to the Edgewater Yacht Club
Cleveland Arcade (401 Euclid Avenue) Monday-Saturday 10am-6pm; this Rockefeller-built indoor shopping mall from 1890 is a classy 5-story arcade
The Loop (2180 W. 11th Street) 7am-9pm daily; two floors of vinyl records and a café on the ground floor
Hingetown Pizza Mural (2817 Detroit Avenue) Mike Sobeck graffiti art located behind the Schaefer Printing Building
Hoopples Bar (1930 Columbus Road) open 2pm-2:30am; two-story bar with an outdoor patio in The Flats; great burgers and live music
Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Hingetown Pizza Mural in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Zubal Books in Cleveland, Ohio (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Rachel is the Creative Director for the Detroit Festival of Books and thanks to WambaTech, she recently finished her amazing new piece, entitled ‘School of Thought‘.
This piece was created using ink, watercolor and gouache.
Rachel is an exceptionally talented artist and she will be selling artwork and posters and other goodies at Detroit Bookfest.
Aerial photo of MSU (photo courtesy of: Michigan State University)
Michigan State University is a sprawling and beautiful campus of leafy trees, ubiquitous green & white team colors, and intriguing experiences, such as visiting the World’s Largest Library Comic Book Collection.
Located in East Lansing, about 1hr 30mins west of Detroit, the school was founded in 1855 as a prototype land-grant university and renamed MSU in 1964.
MSU currently sits on 5,200-acres dotted with 566 buildings. Over 50,000 students attend here. There are 27 resident halls and over 900 registered student groups on campus. Yes, this place is massive. It’s one of the largest universities by population in the USA.
MSU’s Nuclear Physics graduate program ranks # 1 in the nation. Magic Johnson & Sam Raimi attended MSU simultaneously in the late 1970’s. Fun factoids abound.
I’m here visiting the MSU Library, the building which contains the main portion of the comic collection.
Red Cedar River (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
You park on the north side of Spartan Stadium in Lot # 62 W (99 Red Cedar Road, East Lansing). You ‘pay by plate’ by the hour. Then, use the footbridge to cross the beautiful Red Cedar River and enter the library doors straight ahead.
As the world’s largest library/academic comic book collection, the MSU Comic Collection is a true world resource.
Sure, Mile High Comics in Denver has a self-estimated eight million comic books in three warehouses and a single individual, Bob Bretall, in Mission Viejo, California has over 105,000 comics.
But the MSU Collection is catalogued, indexed, available to the general public free of charge and managed by comic book expert, Randall W. Scott.
Randall W. Scott, or “Randy” as he prefers to be called, is an MSU Special Collections Librarian, Comic Art Bibliographer, and head curator of the MSU Comic Art Collection. Working here almost 50-years, Randy has one of the greatest jobs on the planet: reading and archiving comic books.
Yes, a state university had the foresight to bankroll Randy’s unique expertise and thus, help fund a world-class collection of pop culture artifacts in the form of comics books. We’re so jelly. Randy, I want your job.
MSU’s Comic Book Curator and Head Honcho: Randy Scott
Randall W. Scott, aka: Randy, head of the MSU Comics Collection (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“I’ve always enjoyed comic books. I like the format of blending words and pictures. I also read a lot of books without pictures. Mainly, I like thinking about how the literary form of comic books works and is evolving. Comic books are different from every other kind of storytelling. And I like the theoretical questions associated with comics and collecting comics.”
“I grew up on a farm in Alpena County in a little town called Hubbard Lake. I like to practice reading in other languages like French, German, Spanish. My foreign language level is fair. But my level of reading comics is pretty good.”
“In the late Sixties, I migrated to Lansing and attended MSU while working at Curious Book Shop, a used & rare bookstore run by Ray Walsh. I was Ray’s first employee and the comics buyer there back when Curious had an upstairs that was all comics. Stan Lee did a signing there once! I met Ray while we were both students at MSU. He was famous for riding his bike around campus in a trench coat.”
The Paper (image courtesy of: Michigan State University)
“As a student here at MSU, I worked as a writer and editor on an underground paper aptly called ‘The Paper’ and toward the end of its lifespan, it became absorbed into SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. There was a national movement for underground papers at that time. Detroit had The Fifth Estate, Ann Arbor had The Sun and so on. In June 1969, we had a convention in Chicago where SDS split and The Weathermen became one of the splits, so I briefly became an original Weatherman before it became the Weather Underground.”
“I have a B.A. from MSU and an M.S. in Library Science from Columbia with a concentration in cataloging and indexing.”
“I started working in the MSU Library back in 1971. I had various jobs, including being a preorder typist, whereby I would send out orders to jobbers to order books. I started cataloging the Comic Art Collection in 1974 when I developed a system for indexing and cataloging them and I’ve been here ever since.”
“In 1975, a high-school student stole our Amazing Spider-Man # 1 comic book. We knew who it was but couldn’t prove it. Today, in good condition, that comic is worth around $100,000.”
“After that happened, I decided to take on the job of looking after the Comic Collection, during my lunch hours, as a volunteer.”
MSU Comic Collection: At 350,000 items, it’s the World’s Largest Library Comic Book Collection
MSU Comic Collection (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Randy and I head downstairs, one floor below the Reading Room.
The Comic Collection is housed in long rows of electronic Spacesaver mobile storage units. The lights are on 120-second timers, thus, if there’s no movement for 120 seconds, the lights go off.
“We have the main core of the collection here. Then we have about 700 shelves of international comics at an offsite, remote storage warehouse.”
Russell Nye: Creator of the MSU Comic Collection
Russell B. Nye circa 1978 (photo courtesy of: Michigan State University)
“The MSU Comic Collection started in 1969-70 when MSU professor Russell Nye donated 6,000 comic books, mostly 60’s-era Marvel superhero comics, to the university.”
“Around 100 of the comics were his, the rest were from some of his senior students who donated their collections to him for his new Pop Culture course.”
“Nye taught in the English department from 1941-79. He was an early proponent of Pop Culture Theory and I had him as a teacher. Nye was a gentleman, always wore a suit, taught 19th century American Literature and had an inquiring mind.”
“At the time, comics were deemed ‘inappropriate material’ by academia. However, Nye was respectable, he had also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1945, so they couldn’t deny this pop culture scholar’s donation of comics.”
Comic Buyer’s Guide issue # 1 (1971) image courtesy of: Michigan State University
“Comic books had already been around for over 100 years and it took them that long to get academic recognition. I did Independent Study with Nye and wrote a paper called ‘Comics in Libraries’ where I argued for their inclusion.”
“Prior to this, academic libraries had been reluctant to collect and study comics, which they foffed off as ‘subliterature’. It was revolutionary times. The spirit of the time was to open things up and do what hadn’t been done before.”
“Nye wasn’t thought of as a radical but being a proponent of putting comic books in libraries was definitely a radical idea at the time. It’s hard to fathom now because it’s more commonplace. Now over 50 libraries have permanent comic book collections.”
It’s a Midwest thing: Michigan and Ohio Lead the Charge
Bowling Green University’s Popular Culture dept. (image courtesy of Bowling Green University)
“Ohio’s Bowling Green University started a Pop Culture department around the same time. The Journal of Popular Culture started in 1967 at Bowling Green and was edited by Ray Browne. They now have the Browne Popular Culture Library, which is the world’s largest collection of pulps, dime novels and ephemera.”
“In 1977, Lucy Caswell started the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University, which is now the world’s largest repository of original cartoon art.”
“It was a Midwest thing. We started putting comic books in libraries, then NYPL followed suit after a few years and now it’s a global thing.”
“In 1978, the Russell B. Nye Popular Culture Collection was officially titled as a branch of the Special Collections. This collection includes the Comic Art Collection, 10,000 volumes of sci-fi (mostly monographs), probably 5,000 books, magazines & fanzines, and loads of Popular Fiction (ie: dime novels, pulps, detective, westerns, etc).”
MSU Library’s Carolyn Blunt (c. 1973)
A Taste of the Goodies
Young Allies # 1 (1941) photo by: Ryan M. Place
“The hardest part of being a Comics Librarian is cataloguing. Cataloguing is a daily, ongoing process. On January 1st, 1981, we stopped using the filing index card system.”
“Every year we get deliveries of 12 to 20 boxes of comics sent via UPS. Gerber invented mylar comic sleeves. I order these babies 5,000 at a time. Cataloguing all this stuff takes time.”
“We have 7 copies of the original Obadiah Oldebuck here, the first comic ever created.”
Obadiah Oldebuck, the first comic book ever printed (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“We have all sorts of comics: Young Allies # 1(1941), Walt Disney Comics and Stories No. 1 (1940), Wonder Woman # 1 (1942), R. Crumb’s Zap # 1 (1967), etc.”
“We have about 600 Underground comics, 10,000 volumes of Manga, 1 million comic strips donated by Dick Webster, and large holdings of Eclipse, Marvel, DC, Fantagraphics.”
“We have the King Features proof sheet collection from NYC (1930’s-1990’s).”
Rodney Ford scrapbooks (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“We have 530 scrapbooks of daily newspaper strips. They came all at once from Rodney Ford in Sacramento, California. Over 100 titles from the 1920’s-1970’s. He made the scrapbooks meticulously by hand.”
“We have 17,000 Golden Era comics (1938-52), the first 1,000 of which came from Jim Haynes, a Connecticut racetrack owner who grew up in Port Huron, Michigan.”
“We have the Lexikon der Comics, the only copy in North America. It’s a German language encyclopedia of comics.”
“The list goes on and on. MSU has a tradition of keeping the best two copies of each item. Our triplicates we give to the MSU Surplus Store to be sold, and proceeds of these sales come directly back to the library to continue supporting the collection.”
Lexikon der Comics: German language encyclopedia of comic books (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
MSU’s International Comics @ the Remote Storage Warehouse
MSU International Comics inside Remote Storage warehouse (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
After touring the main collection, Randy drives us to an offsite warehouse in Lansing, about 15 minutes away from the main library. The facilities coordinator, Josh Maki, lets us in.
The warehouse is divided into two massive rooms.
One room contains international comic books on 10 and 12-foot-high steel shelving. The other room is a high-density storage bay of 800,000 books and bound journals. Big blue-box air scrubbers clean the air.
This is but one warehouse in a complex of warehouses. The others are: Folio, Special Collections and RSA. The comics warehouse is RS-F and called ‘remote storage’. Spread across the complex, there are around 1.7 million items.
MSU Remote Storage warehouse (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“Here we have about 700 shelves of international non-American comics from all over the world. For instance, we have 1,800 comics catalogued from India alone.”
“We have shoe boxes full of two million daily comic strips, plus big boxes of proof sheets, Sunday sections, etc.”
“The most we ever paid was $130,000 for 13,000 European comics in the 1990’s.”
“We get about one international visitor per month, mostly from Europe and Asia.”
“When visiting, please remember that international comics must be requested at least three full days in advance.”
Funding: Where does the money come from?
“I get a little slice of the annual MSU Library book budget. I also have a couple of endowments which provide funding. Our total annual budget is around $40,000.”
“In regard to acquisitions, I have a Collection Development statement that I follow when we want to acquire new material for the collection.”
In addition to the budget Randy receives from MSU, generous supporters also lend a hand by giving funds in support of this collection.
For more information on ways you can support the collection, contact:
MSU Special Collections Rare Book Collection (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Established in 1962, the MSU Special Collections department contains 450,000+ printed works, several manuscript and archival collections, a huge stash of ephemera, and more.
Randy Scott at work in the MSU Library basement (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
“Well, I’ll need to retire one day, I suppose.”
“My replacement will need to be enthusiastic about comic scholarship, knowledgeable in the field of comics books and care deeply about growing the collection and understanding how important it is.”
“The MSU Comic Collection is always open to donations of comic books. If you or someone you know wants to donate their collection, they can email or call the MSU Libraries’ Development Office.”
“Personally, I think it would be cool if the library put a little more recognition into the comics, such as the graphic novels. We have a ton of graphic novels, including the first-ever, Will Eisner’s ‘A Contract with God’ from 1978.”
Randy Scott at work in the MSU Library basement (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
MSU logo (image courtesy of: Michigan State University)
Ryan’s Final Thoughts
Having toured the collection multiple times, I feel it necessitates its own building.
Due to the size, importance and future growth potential of the collection, MSU should consider centralizing the entire collection under one roof exclusively.
You could also add a museum component to this, complete with display cases, regular events and periodic in-person signings.
Ryan’s Recommendations on Visiting the MSU Comic Collection
While visiting MSU, you might want to make time to check out the following:
1.) Brody Square (241 Brody West) campus food hall
Brody Hall (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Brody Hall (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Park in the Kellogg Conference Center parking garage (219 S. Harrison Rd.) for $1.50/hr. Walk directly across the street to Brody. Up on the 2nd floor is one of the most ingenious campus food hall concepts ever created.
Brody features 9 to 12 food stations. For $10.00 per person it’s all you can eat, all day long. And yes, this is open to the general public.
They have a wondrous array of food featuring things like:
Burritos, sushi, spicy crab soup, Cajun fish with mashed potatoes and gravy, Hudsonville ice cream (get the Cake Batter with chocolate syrup), 15 breakfast cereals, pepperoni pizza, vegetable spring roll, miso soup, mango slush drink, pasta with spinach and alfredo, breadsticks, and more.
Also impressive is their automated tray system. You walk over to a moving wall of empty metal racks and slide your tray in and it disappears into the back for the cleaners. Every university in the country should replicate this food hall model.
MSU Dairy Store grilled cheese (photo by: Ryan M. Place)
Park out front at the meters. 8 minutes per quarter or use your credit card.
This is an ice cream parlor open to the general public and run by the MSU Department of Food Science. All the ice cream is made right here at MSU. You can even buy half-gallon tubs!
I recommend trying a double scoop of the Sesquicentennial Swirl and Dantonio’s Double Fudge.
Also try the Grilled cheese on sourdough with a cup of soup.
Park directly behind the store. $2.25 for 90 minutes maximum.
Opened in 1969, this is a used & rare bookstore with a large sci-fi section.
The store is owned by Randy’s friend Ray Walsh. Ray has done a tremendous number of good things for the book community over the past several decades.
Ray puts on the annual Michigan Antiquarian Book & Paper Show. You can usually find Ray himself a half mile down the road, running his other bookstore, Archives Book Shop (519 W. Grand River).
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