This collection is arranged in 4 series based on the location where the art was created or by topic. The series are as follows: Series 1: Boston, 1946-2006 Series 2: Military, 1962-1973 Series 3: Japan, 1968-1973 Series 4: The Love Rangers, 1970s-1980s
CGA.2019.059: Betsy Grant, 2019
Materials in this collection are available for use, but may be used in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum reading room only.
Original Art by Vernon E. Grant has been separated and cataloged in BICLM original art database. The materials are currently being cataloged, please contact the BICLM for access.
The Vernon E. Grant Collection contains original art, sketchbooks, roughs, letters, clippings and photocopies of comic strips.
Vernon Ethelbert Grant was born February 14, 1935 in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Joseph and Naomi, immigrants from Barbados. Grant showed artistic inclinations at a young age, ccience fiction and soldiers were two topics found in his early works that remained influences throughout his life. Grant also began to self-publish and sell comic books he had drawn, along with other comic books from his locker at Rindge Technical High School in Cambridge. Grant graduated from high school in 1952 and began work in the shipping department at Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company in Cambridge. He enrolled in Vesper George College of Art in Boston but attended for only a year.
In 1958, Grant joined the US Army to serve his country, travel the world, and be able to obtain a college education. Grant was invited to become an Officer and to attend Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning, Georgia in 1960. He graduated from the program as a Second Lieutenant in 1961. He rose through the ranks and earned a promotion to First Lieutenant in 1963, and later achieved the rank of Captain in 1965. He served in France and Germany, where he received training as a Supply Sergeant. Most of his responsibilities in the US Army were in the field of communications. In 1964, he was stationed in Japan, whose culture and comics would have a lasting influence on his work. During his first year he served as Comptroller for the Far East Network (FEN), a radio and television station run by the US Armed Forces in Japan. FEN broadcasted coverage of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo to a worldwide audience. Grant was appointed Deputy Information Officer in addition to Community Relations Officer at Camp Zama, near Tokyo during the years 1965 to 1966. He was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for exceptional performance of these duties. In December 1966, Grant was stationed in Saigon as Assistant Information Officer and Commanding Officer to the 15th Public Information Office (PIO) Detachment for the 25th Infantry. From January to December 1967 he was assigned to the 1st Signal Brigade and was the commanding officer of a 400-man security force tasked with guarding the twenty-three communication sites which stretched the length of South Vietnam. This required frequent travel between the sites by helicopter, which appeared in many of his cartoons at the time. Grant finished his tour in Vietnam and came back to Japan, leaving military service in early 1968.
Throughout his military career he often drew cartoons for some of his military training courses and sketched his environment, as if making references to be used in later works. The collection contains many of the sketchbooks Grant kept throughout his military career. While stationed in Japan he contributed cartoons to the Pacific Stars and Stripes newspaper, which featured single panel gag cartoons under the titles “Grant’s Grunts” or “Grant’s Heroes.” These cartoons showcase Grant’s quirky humor satirizing military life.
After Grant left the US Army in 1968, he stayed in Tokyo and enrolled in Sophia University to earn a bachelor’s degree in Japanese History in 1970 and began courses for a master’s degree. During this time, Grant was also beginning to self-publish in order to get his work more exposure. Stand-By One! (1969) offers a humorous look at military life, similar to the cartoons he drew for the Pacific Stars and Stripes newspaper. Grant created and self-published the two-volume graphic novels Point-Man Palmer and His Girlfriend “Invisible Peppermint”: Vietnam (1969) and Point-Man Palmer and His Girlfriend “Invisible Peppermint”: Vietnam to Tokyo R&R (1970), stories about US Army life in the 1960s. Pacific Stars and Stripes was essential in distributing both of these books and would ship copies directly to base exchange chains, which sold the books throughout Asia. Grant’s time as a student inspired his next cartoon strip, “Sofa University,” a humorous portrayal of college and life in Japan. He would post a new strip each week on the wall in the lobby of Sophia University. These strips remain unpublished, but examples can be found within the collection. At this time, Grant was a regular contributor to the Mainichi Daily News, one of the two English- language newspapers in Tokyo. He drew a single panel gag cartoon series “Having a Grant Time in Japan!” about being an American in Japan and had a weekly column called “Action Line” in which readers contacted the newspaper to ask where to buy things and find services in Tokyo. Grant would select a question and create a cartoon to illustrate it. In addition, Grant occasionally contributed editorial cartoons to the newspaper. He also wrote book and movie reviews for the Mainichi Daily News and wrote a three-part article on Lone Wolf and Cub, adapted from a potential graduate thesis on manga
Grant met his wife, Betsy Reese a classmate from Sophia University. The couple left Japan in 1973 and returned to Grant's hometown, Cambridge, Massachussetts. They married in 1978. Grant held several jobs during this period including illustrating advertisements for local companies, driving a taxi cab, and selling his self-published comic books from his collection out of his garage on Saturdays. Comics were a labor of love for Grant, and although he did not have full-time employment as a cartoonist, he continued to create and sell his comics. Inspired by his location near Harvard University, he began a comic book series, “Harry, the Harvard Freshman,” , Grant drew on his love of science fiction, along with his experiences in Japan and the military, to create his fantasy series, The Love Rangers. The series focused on a racially mixed crew of space cadet soldiers who live aboard a gigantic space ship. The first issue was published in 1977 and Grant had them printed at a local copy shop. He also worked to promote the books and sold them through sci-fi fanzines like Small Press Explosion, and at local shops such as Million Year Picnic in Cambridge and Avenue Victor Hugo Books in Boston.
Grant attributed his creativity to his daily runs. As a young man he excelled at sports in school and took up running and weight-lifting to get into shape prior to enlisting in the US Army. After returning to Cambridge, he completed thirty-three marathons. Running allowed him to formulate his ideas and conceptualize the accompanying art. Grant suffered a heart attack on his daily run on July 7, 2006 and passed away from resulting complications at age 71 on July 23, 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Jeffrey Outcalt, October 2021
[identification of item], [Box number/ folder number], Vernon E. Grant Collection, SPEC.CGA.VEG, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Ohio State University