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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 12, 2018

Noah Van Sciver Donates Original Art to Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

COLUMBUS – Award-winning cartoonist Noah Van Sciver has donated more than 140 pages of original art, including near complete works, to The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

As one of the most prolific and acclaimed contemporary cartoonists, Van Sciver’s career includes the publication of more than ten graphic novels in English and French, ten issues of the popular comic book Blammo published by Kilgore Books and weekly comic strips for the alternative newspapers Columbus Alive and Denver’s Westword. His work has appeared in Mad magazine, Mome and Mineshaft. In 2016, Van Sciver won an Ignatz Award at the Small Press Expo in the category of ‘Best Story’ for My Hot Date. Van Sciver’s graphic novel explorations of historic persons including Abraham Lincoln, Elijah Pierce Lovejoy, Johnny Appleseed, Eugene V. Debs (forthcoming), and Joseph Smith (forthcoming) successfully cut to the inner world of otherwise austere figures.

The donation includes nearly all pages from Saint Cole and the complete Fante Bukowski, both published in 2015 from Fantagraphics, as well as the story Wolf Nerd from NOW no. 3 (Fantagraphics, 2018) and a selection of unpublished pages.

Van Sciver says of his donation, “It makes me proud to know that some of my earliest and most formative work has a home where it can be accessed by anyone and I know it will be excellently cared for.”

“As a cartoonist who’s spent time in multiple cities, including a few years in Columbus, I can appreciate how rare and important a place like the Billy Ireland is. I’ve personally enjoyed taking advantage of the Billy Ireland’s vast offerings to the public, including research in the reading room, outstanding events, speakers and exhibits,” states Van Sciver, who recently relocated to Columbia, South Carolina.

“It is so important that an early-career cartoonist like Noah Van Sciver has thought to preserve his work for future generations of scholars, students and fans,” notes curator Jenny Robb, “Van Sciver’s work in Saint Cole and Fante Bukowski is alternately hilarious, insightful, and deeply personal, and we are honored to receive this generous gift from him documenting the development of his impressive career.”

Van Sciver’s collection compliments those of other cartoonists that have placed complete works with the Billy Ireland, including Jeff Smith, Edie Fake and Katie Green.

About the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum:  The BICLM is one of The Ohio State University Libraries’ special collections. Its primary mission is to develop a comprehensive research collection of materials documenting American printed cartoon art (editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, sports cartoons, and magazine cartoons) and to provide access to these collections.  The BICLM recently moved into its newly-renovated 30,000 sq. ft. facility that includes a museum with three exhibition galleries, a reading room for researchers and a state-of-the-art collections storage space.  The library reading room is open Monday-Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The Museum is open Tuesday-Sunday from 1 – 5 p.m.  See http://cartoons.osu.edu/ for further information.