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Repository: Cartoon Research Library, The Ohio State University
Creator: San Francisco Academy of Comic Art. Bill Blackbeard, Director
Title: Newspaper Comic Strips,
Dates: 1897-1996
Description: 200 boxes.
Extent: This group of records comprises one part of the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection at the Cartoon Research Library. It is the first part of the collection to be encoded for presentation on the World Wide Web.
The San Francisco Academy of Comic Art (SFACA) Collection is the product of a single collector whose goal was to establish a complete collection of cartoon art from American newspapers, beginning with the earliest examples. In addition to newspaper art, the SFACA collection includes popular periodicals, popular ficion, popular film, narrative art reference works, comic books and graphic novels, dime novels and story papers, Victorian cartoon-illustrated fiction, science fiction fanzines, Brithish boys' papers and "penny dreadfuls," and the works of significant fiction writers, all of these reflecting the collector's desire to amass a comprehensive collection of popular narrative. As this finding aid describes only the newspaper comics part of the SFACA collection, the following biography concentrates exclusively on the collector's efforts in this area.
Bill Blackbeard was born in Lawrence, Indiana, on April 28, 1926, and grew up in Newport Beach, California. He began reading newspaper comic strips during the 1930's, an era that featured such accomplished artists as Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff, George Herriman, E. C. Segar, Clifford Sterrett, Chester Gould, and many others. He attended high school in Newport Beach and went to Fullerton College on the GI Bill. His military service was in the 89th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squad, 9th Army, in France, Belgium and Germany, during World War II. During high school and college, his main interests were in history and literature, particularly English and American literature. After college, Mr. Blackbeard began working as a freelance writer, publishing stories in serials such as Weird Tales.
During the 1960s, Mr. Blackbeard began to be interested in writing a history of the comic strip. He found, however, that there was no research center collecting complete runs of comic strips from American newspapers. Concurrently, he discovered that many public and university libraries were discarding older, bound newspapers after microfilming them. In order to acquire these papers, he established the SFACA as a non-profit organization in 1968. He began collecting newspapers from California libraries, then expanded his scope to institutions nationwide, including the Library of Congress.
For the next 30 years, Mr. Blackbeard continued to acquire newspapers, along with the other materials mentioned above. In 1996, he sold the SFACA collection to the Cartoon Research Library at the Ohio State University, ensuring that the collection would be kept intact and remain available for research. The collection, 75 tons of material in all, was carried from California to Ohio in six moving vans. Mr. Blackbeard moved to Santa Cruz, where he continues to operate the SFACA, and to collect representations of American popular narrative.
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The Newspaper Comics section of the SFACA Collection consists of 2.5 million clippings and tearsheets from American newspapers, dating from 1894 to 1996. Materials in the collection include clipped comic strips, single comic pages, complete Sunday comic sections, and entire newspapers. The focus of the first two years of work on this collection has been to establish a chronological run of each comic feature, either by amassing a group of clippings, or by identifying each feature's loation in the collection of Sunday comic sections.
The distinction between comic clippings and comic sections is significant. The collector's original intent was to establish a complete run, from beginning to end, of every comic feature ever to have appeared in an American newspaper. In most cases, this meant clipping examples of each feature from various newspapers, for two reasons. First, no single newspaper could have run every comic feature. Second, any given newspaper might print a feature for a certain length of time, and then drop it, temporarily or permanently. Newspaper strikes and mail strikes could also interfere with the continuous run of a feature in a given publication.
However, some features were never clipped from the original comic sections in which they appeared. The collector recognized that many of the early comic sections, dating from the 1890s to the 1920s, were extremely rare, and should be kept intact. In addition to the comic art they contain, many feature elaborate headers, margin illustrations, and illustrated advertisements, all forming part of the overall design of the publication. The archivist's division of the two formats into separate series is described below, under "Organization."
It was the goal of the archivist for the SFACA project to present complete date runs of each comic feature to interested researchers. To achieve an integrated presentation, a tabular format was designed, in the form of spreadsheets, each representing one year and containing a month-and-date grid, created in Excel and presented on the Web in PDF. Researchers can use the spreadsheets to ascertain whether the Cartoon Research Library has holdings of a comic feature for particular dates. Each cell value is a letter-and-number combination, which represent the item's physical location in the library, and are used by staff to retrieve materials.
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The collection is organized into two series. Series I, Comic Clipppings, includes the comic features clipped from newspapers by the collector. Series II, Comic Sections, includes the entire Sunday comic sections kept intact by the collector. The records in Series I will be most useful to researchers focusing on a particular comic feature. Those in Series II will be of use primarily to those who want to study a chronological run of Sunday sections from a particular newspaper or syndicate.
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The materials in each series are arranged alphabetically by title, then chronologically, beginning with the earliest edition. In Series I, comic strips are grouped alphabetically by feature title. Alternate titles are listed in addition to a uniform title. "Alternate title," as defined here, includes earlier, later, and concurrent variant titles. This single encompassing term has been used in order to maintain simplicity in the finding aid. For a more complete explanations of title changes, the researcher should consult The Stripper's Guide, a database available by subscription on CD-ROM, which tracks the histories of comic strips in great detail, and which was of enormous help to the Cartoon Research Library staff in the processing of this collection.
The comic sections in Series II are arranged alphabetically by the titles of the newspapers in which they appeared. At present, only titles, dates, and dimensions are offered in this finding aid's records. A new phase of the SFACA Collection project, beginning in August 2002, will focus on indexing one-shots and other non-continuous content, and its results will be presented in Series II.
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Restrictions on Access: Agreement with the collector states that all materials in the collection will be delivered to the Cartoon Research Library by 2008. Materials remaining in California until that date are not available through the library until then.
Restrictions on Use: Reproduction of materials in the collection is subject to the restrictions of copyright law. For any materials not yet in the public domain, the researcher must obtain permission from the copyright holder.
Acquistions Information: The collection was purchased from Bill Blackbeard, proprietor of the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art, in 1996.
Prefered Citation: San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection, The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library.
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This is an alphabetical listing of comic features held in the collection. Each record includes the feature's uniform title and alternate titles; creator names; a representative image of the work; and links to PDF's displaying detailed holdings information. The SFC, SFT, and SFS numbers indicate the location of the comic strips in the archive, and are used by staff for retrieving the materials.
Much of the collection consists of clipped comic strips housed in boxes. However, for many features, it is likely that only some examples were clipped, while others are to be found in the complete Sunday comic sections which the collector left intact. All holdings information is displayed in the PDFs accessible through the "View Detailed Listing of Holdings" links. Clippings are designated by location numbers beginning with "SFC"; comics in Sunday sections are designated with "SFS." "SFT" indicates the comic is found on a tearsheet, which may or may not contain additional comic features.
Note that the inclusive dates presented in the following list of comic features do not necessarily mean that CGA has complete holdings for the span of dates listed. For example, "1915-1930" may mean that the library has only 1915, 1918-1924, and 1929-1930. Always click the "View Detailed Listing of Holdings" links to be sure. The collection is still being processed, so holdings information displayed here will increase over time.
Click on the links below to view records for comic features, by title.
Comic titles beginning with the letter:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Note: You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the detailed listing of holdings.This is a listing of Sunday comic sections held in the collection. The list is alphabetical by newspaper title. This listing will be of interest primarily to researchers wishing to study a chronological run of a particular newspaper's Sunday comic sections. If you are interested in locating a particular comic strip, refer to the title of the comic strip in Series I, and click the links for "View Detailed Listing of Holdings."
Click on the links below to see records for newspaper comic sections, by publication title.
Chicago American
Cincinnati Enquirer
Detroit Free Press
Hearst Sunday Examiner Magazine
Los Angeles Examiner
New York American
New York American and Journal
New York Journal
Oakland Tribune
Omaha Illustrated Bee
San Francisco Examiner,
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
St. Louis Republic