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At this point, he costs involved. Rather than seeking
and his wife, Barbara, monetary donations or pursuing
were living with his grants, Blackbeard wrote and edited a
growing collection. plethora of books and articles that
Many of his friends became the foundation for the
noted that they barely reference materials needed about this
had room for their topic and were non-existent when he
bed in the bedroom, was conducting his early research.
and the only place In the mid 1960s, Blackbeard
without comic strips hatched an idea: he wanted to write a
was the bathroom due formal history of the American comic
to the humidity. By strip. He’d grown up on Floyd
establishing the non- Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse and E.C.
A microfilm machine that at one time was considered profit, they then Segar’s Popeye (i.e., Thimble Theatre),
to be “the answer” to storing newspaper history, but The Smithsonian Collection of
resulted with millions of newspapers being tossed out. moved into larger and “so I had been exposed to the best,” he Newspaper Comics edited by Bill
larger living spaces said. With this book, he wanted to
(aka storage room) by guaranteeing that the content of the entire immortalize the immortals. He Blackbeard and Martin Williams
collection would be available 24/7. pitched the idea to Oxford University
The large cadre of news- Press, and his project was approved.
papers being donated resulted But then, he was stymied by the Bi
in a good deal of manual absence of available primary resource R
labor, paging through each material. The book was never written. Sp
paper, then stripping out the That did not stop the determined
comics sections, and then comic strip historian from his mission
getting rid of the rest of the to share the knowledge he was accu-
paper. Afterward, the comic mulating. One example of his literary
strips were put together to prowess happened in 1977 when
show an entire story that ran Blackbeard and Martin Williams
over many days. Entire edited The Smithsonian Collection of
Sunday Funnies sections Newspaper Comics. This book, much
were maintained as well. like his collection, was “a huge,
gorgeous, massive, and beloved tome
The Big Hit that stands as a testament to the lasting 100 Years of Comic Strips
Just as this latest phase of cultural and artistic importance of the edited by Bill Blackbeard, Dale
collecting was kicking into newspaper strip,” according to Jeet Crain, and James Vance, 1995
gear thanks to volunteers and Heer, an Indian-Canadian author and
friends helping with the task, comics critic. Over the years,
Blackbeard found out that, Blackbeard edited more than 100
“The Library of Congress books based on his material from
had six acres of Naval Just a small section of Bill Blackbeard’s the collection.
warehouses in Alexandria, labyrinth of newspaper comics that were Blackbeard’s writing tended to be
Virginia, which housed stored in his home. academic in style with flashes of play-
bound files of every major fulness in the form of puns, side sto-
American big city newspaper going back into the nineteenth century. ries, and somewhat long information-
An incredible collection. And everything in it was absolutely mint.” filled paragraphs that “wound around
How did he know they were mint? Because they were being donated and eventually come upon themselves
to SFACA. It turns out that the Library of Congress was replacing going in the opposite directions. His
bound volumes of newspapers with microfilm. The institution felt prose was the work of a man who
this would save space and maintain the historical record once the loved the written language, and read-
papers disintegrated completely. But, as considered by Blackbeard, ing it made the attentive reader smile Great Comic Cats by Bill
“They paid no attention to the evidence in their own hands that these gratefully,” according to The Comics Blackbeard and Malcolm
papers were not disintegrating; they were in fine condition.” They Journal. His writing endeavors were Whyte with a foreword by
remain so as long as they are not exposed to light (hence the dim what went to pay the bills and build Jim (Garfield) Davis, 1981
illumination in collection rooms at SFACA) or high humidity. the collection.
Unhappily, he discovered that many of the Library of Congress Blackbeard also funded his mission
volumes had already been microfilmed and discarded before he could and modest lifestyle by selling copies or
get them. Blackbeard then scoured the country for libraries willing to duplicates of comic strips as well as
give him their bound files as they microfilmed the newspapers into reproductions of pulps to collectors
posterity and oblivion. and researchers.
“Many libraries didn’t care who I was,” Blackbeard said. “Just take
the files off our hands, they said. And I would go in and physically The Collection Saver: Billy
take them and truck them back here to San Francisco. And they Ireland Cartoon Library &
thought that was wonderful because they didn’t have to hire someone Museum
to do it. So, I had Ryder trucks trundling all across the country – from In 1997, Blackbeard sold his entire
Chicago, from New York, from the Library of Congress.” collection to the Billy Ireland Cartoon
Library and Museum at the Ohio
Where did the Money Come From? State University. Curator of Special
Blackbeard and his wife lived simply without many needs. The Even more stacks of newspaper comics stored at
dedication—and space—given to the mission of creating a complete Blackbeard’s home before being moved to the
assemblage of comic strips was immense, but so were some of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. Continued on page 30

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