Bill Blackbeard, the Collector
Bill Blackbeard, a life-long comics fan, historian, and collector, dedicated his life to the preservation of newspaper comics. Over the course of 30 years, Blackbeard amassed the world’s most comprehensive collection of comic strip clippings and illustrated pages in his home—totaling 75 tons of material—and christened it the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art. Blackbeard’s call to action came in the mid-1900s when libraries across the United States began disposing of their bound volumes of newspapers and replacing them with microfilmed versions. Knowing the limitations of black and white microfilm for preserving our colorful cultural heritage, Blackbeard recognized that the physical printed newspaper was vulnerable to extinction. He had a passion for everyday mass-produced printed ephemera. His collection grew to include various forms of cheaply-produced narrative art, including Victorian-era penny dreadfuls, science fiction fanzines, pulp magazines, dime novels, and illustrated story papers.
Blackbeard sought to elevate the status of cartoon art “from the profane to sacred.” He saw what had been deemed the detritus of commercial society as our heritage: American material culture. Many of the works Blackbeard preserved are the last surviving copies of their kind. These invaluable historical documents provide a unique view of popular culture at the start of the 20th century, when the printed page was king. The daily newspaper was the first form of mass communication, and the illustrators and cartoonists whose imagery and ideas filled the pages were entering the homes of millions of Americans.
Twenty-five years ago, this vast and unparalleled collection of over 2.5 million items was transferred to The Ohio State University, where it has since been the source of countless research discoveries and fascination. In this exhibit, visitors will glimpse into Blackbeard's forward-thinking motivations and heroic efforts, his vision for the collection, and the treasures he procured.
Bill Blackbeard was born April 28, 1926, and spent his early childhood in rural Lawrence, Indiana, before he moved to Newport Beach, California around 1935. Growing up, the richly colorful Sunday comics section – then in its prime – was a portal for Blackbeard to another world. Like many children, he developed a fascination with the storylines, settings, and cultures they introduced him to – and the adventures one could continue with the characters each passing week.
A life-altering moment arrived when young Blackbeard realized that—at a time before recycling—his neighbors would often save weeks’ or months’ worth of newspapers in their basement or garage for various household use – insulation, lining a bird cage, wrapping packages, or cleaning glass. To his delight, they were happy to accommodate his requests to take this scrap paper off their hands for his own enjoyment. An obsession with collecting had begun.
“Once I discovered this, I had no other interest in life than finding these caches of newspapers.”
With age came an expanded interest in popular culture beyond the funny pages. After serving in WWII, Blackbeard pursued a career as a writer, contributing to pulp magazines of the day, and immersing himself further into the rich history of narrative art. He noticed a gap in the literature about American art – almost no one was studying or writing about newspaper comics.
"I realized that I could literally live in this world with no trouble at all"
Around this same time, libraries across the United States were considering new space-saving initiatives. Microforms – an early digitization format for replacing physical holdings with scaled-down reproductions – were embraced by libraries as a replacement for their expansive bound volumes of historic newspapers. Blackbeard saw this as an opportunity to take on what they no longer needed, and in order to facilitate the transfer of materials in alignment with institutional policy, formed a non-profit he called the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection. Blackbeard’s home at 2850 Ulloa Street in the Sunset District of San Francisco where he resided with his wife became the ‘Academy’, and he the Director.
Blackbeard travelled all over the US collecting bound volumes from libraries as they shifted to microfilm for their newspaper holdings. This map illustrates the range of cities for which he saved bound volumes and shows how many titles from the big cities he collected. It is a snapshot of what we have processed so far. The collection contains many other newspaper titles and it is worth stressing that the pages in the collection are almost entirely ones with comic, cartoon or illustrative content. The collection does not contain whole runs for any newspaper title.
Microfilm (reels) and microfiche (flat sheets) were introduced as a space-saving solution as early as the 1920s. In 1936, the American Library Association endorsed the use of the format, and in the decades that followed libraries across the nation began to rely on them for preserving their more ephemeral collections. Fragile materials such as highly-acidic newsprint presented a dilemma for libraries to manage as they were prone to disintegration as patrons handled them.
These photographic reproductions could reduce the original document to 1/25 of its original size, and were especially useful for saving the shelf space that large bound volumes of newspapers took up. However, with storage space as the primary goal, attention to the quality and long-term utility of the films was not given proper consideration.
Microforms were created using black and white photography. As you look around this gallery, you will see the vibrant pages from the newspaper, which were reduced to lifeless grayscale for microform, losing their essential color information.
In the process of rapidly photographing materials for microform, there were often issues with light balance that rendered the material unreadable. Additionally, due to the nature of film, microforms are susceptible to scratches, fingerprints and tears.
Above all, the greatest failure of this process was the loss of the original object. Once these countless tombs of rare historic documents had been microfilmed, the physical artifacts were disposed of – freeing up library shelf space at the price of losing our recorded history and culture. Thanks to the efforts of individuals like Bill Blackbeard, not all was lost. With proper storage and less frequent handling, despite their fragility, newsprint could survive.
Printing the Comics
Early 20th Century printing technology was a modern wonder. Newspapers boasted to readers about their inventive new machinery. By 1913 over 2,600 individual newspaper titles were being printed daily across the US. Major cities had a dozen or more daily newspapers each. Households commonly read several papers a day and bought two – one to take to work, one to keep at home.
The fragile physical newspaper pages rescued by Blackbeard, each an artifact, reflect the tireless work of enormous numbers of people involved in the newspaper industry; typographers, printers, circulation distributors and vendors as well as journalists, editors, illustrators, and cartoonists.
Displayed below are rare surviving elements of the printing process: metal plates, flongs (paper mats) and color separations created for each day’s paper. These materials were produced in mass as part of the printing for each day’s paper, and then melted down or pulped for reuse the following day. The intricate steps involved in this work are outlined in the video below.
Print Historian Glenn Fleishman created this short video for the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum to explain how newspaper comics were made in the age of metal printing.
Newspapers at the Turn of the Century
At the turn of the century newspapers played a vital role in American life. In a time before radio, television and the internet, news primarily reached its audience through the printed page. The U. S. population was growing, literacy was expanding, and increased industrialization and urbanization fed a need for information, entertainment, and identity. Newspapers helped readers, many of whom were immigrants, assimilate and encouraged a shared American culture. People from all walks of life bought and read the same newspapers.
Each day’s newspaper consisted of pages and sections that spoke to a variety of interests: local and international political news, features articles, business and sports news, advertisements and the comics.
Blackbeard's collection of newspaper comics spans from the 1890s to the 1990s. The pages selected for this digital exhibit show what you might expect to see when you opened your newspaper in the first few decades of the 20th century.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
The front page of the newspaper was the editor’s first chance to grab a reader’s attention, and to sell them the paper.
Bold, screaming headlines, large type, and photographs or illustrations dominated these pages as editors calculated how to increase circulation and entice more readers to spend their 1¢ to stay informed about the latest assassination, epidemic, scandal, or court case. The paper was distributed and displayed folded in half, and the story that appeared “above the fold” was a carefully crafted hook.
For the first three decades of the 20th century, major city newspapers would print multiple afternoon and evening editions, in addition to the standard morning paper, to keep their readers abreast of an evolving story. Front pages could be printed at noon, 4pm, 6pm, and again in the late evening. These were the “Extra, Extra,” “Special,” or “Night” editions.
Below, reproductions of four front pages of The Chicago American on September 6, 1901, show the evolution of the assassination of President William McKinley. By saving these pages, Blackbeard allows us to see a snapshot of how mass communication worked in a world before newswires, radio, television, or by scrolling and hitting ‘refresh’ on ‘breaking’ news online.
As radio developed in the early 1930s, late editions became less relevant, and the news vendor’s shouts of “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” became a cry of the past.
Editorial cartoons
Editorial cartoons appeared on the editorial page, and dealt with politics, news, or social issues. They were created to provoke public opinion, often reflecting the viewpoint of the cartoonist or the political leanings of the paper. They were produced under restricted conditions to meet publication deadlines and they provide an excellent record of the preoccupations and sensibilities of a time.
Winsor McCay
McCay is best known for his comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland and pioneering animation work, but he made a living by drawing editorial cartoons. For the last eight years of his life, he was forced to pull back from animation to focus solely on his editorial cartoon commitment with the Hearst newspaper The New York Journal. His work dealt with serious social issues, the economy, public health, and human nature. Often paired with articles by editor Arthur Brisbane, McCay's stylized cartoons were designed to capture the reader's attention. Blackbeard saved over 1,000 examples of McCay’s editorials published between 1913 and 1934.
Nell Brinkley
Brinkley’s first big break came in 1907. At only 21 years of age she was assigned to cover the sensational murder trial of Harry Thaw for the New York Evening Journal. Her drawings shown here of Evelyn Nesbitt, Thaw’s beautiful wife, not only helped increase circulation for the newspaper but also gave an early indication of how her style would evolve.
Nell Brinkley started working for the New York Evening Journal in 1907 and by the mid-1920s she was one of the most beloved and prolific illustrators of the day, known not only as a cartoonist but a ‘personality’. Her exuberant and detailed drawings with accompanying breezy commentary, written by Brinkley herself, were hugely popular. She captured the spirit of the time, depicting women as they wanted to be seen; romantic but also daring and adventurous, fun-loving and independent. In 1914, she flew in a biplane with aviator Glenn Martin, illustrating the experience for readers at home. She had a feminist outlook, and her work encouraged the expansion of women’s rights and examined the social constraints felt by the flappers of the 1920s. Brinkley drew for the newspapers for over three-decades and inspired many future generations of women artists.
Sports Pages
Sports Pages attracted readers and became a major selling point for early newspapers. The New York World introduced a full-time sports department in the late 1880s. Editors quickly realized cartoons brought sports pages to life. Cartoonists were sent to major sporting events to cover the action and capture the atmosphere. The wiring of photographs from sporting events did not begin until the 1920s. As a result, cartoonists were responsible for the visual record of significant sporting events during the first quarter of the 20th century.
Jack Johnson vs. Jim Jefferies
The July 4, 1910, boxing match between Jack Johnson and Jim Jefferies in Reno, Nevada, was billed as the fight of the century and even today maintains a legendary status beyond its sporting context.
In 1908, Johnson became the first-ever Black world heavyweight champion, which made him unpopular with the predominantly white boxing audience. Jefferies, the white, former heavyweight champion, was pressured by promoters and media to come out of a five-year retirement to “prove that a white man is better than a negro.” Jefferies was out of shape; Johnson was in superb physical condition. Johnson dominated the fight, winning in the 15th round.
Over 22,000 spectators were in attendance at the ring built for the occasion, and tens of thousands packed into congregation halls across the US to receive live telegraphs reporting the fight.
There was huge media interest from the first announcement of the fight in late 1909. Coverage of both men's training began early in 1910. The cartoonists shown below were all sent to draw the lead-up to the fight, some as early as six months in advance, and remained in Reno until July to cover the match itself.
The cartoonist Tad Dorgan predicted Johnson’s win on the front page of the New York Journal on the day of the fight, but white Americans were still shocked by the results. From the beginning, media coverage of the event had racial overtones. In the two days following the fight, race riots broke out across the US, resulting in multiple deaths in six different states.
The sensational media interest in the fight prompted the promoter to have the event filmed as a money-making side project. The footage received more public attention than any other film until The Birth of a Nation was released in 1915. After the riots, screening of the film was prohibited in many states.
Black and White Daily Comic Strips
Daily comic strips were black and white and appeared in the newspaper Monday through Saturday.
Initially, daily comics were scattered throughout the paper, but on Wednesday, January 31, 1912, the first full page of comics appeared in a daily edition of the New York Evening Journal and the comics generally remained together from then on.
Krazy Kat: From Daily Black & White Strip to Full Color Sunday Page
George Herriman drew the comic strip Krazy Kat for the New York Evening Journal between 1913 and 1944. Herriman was among the few cartoonists of color working for mainstream newspapers, although he passed as white throughout his career.
Krazy Kat is one of the most revered 20th-century comic strips and is one of the first comics to be treated as serious art. Among its fans were Picasso, James Joyce, Walt Disney, and Charlie Chaplin. The Comics Journal named it the number one comic of the century. It has influenced all the cat and mouse comic stories and animations that have succeeded it, from Felix the Cat to Tom and Jerry, Sylyvester, and Mickey Mouse.
The strip features two main characters, Krazy and Ignatz. Krazy is a carefree cat of ambiguous gender, and Ignatz is an irritable mouse. Krazy loves Ignatz, and Ignatz returns this affection by throwing bricks at Krazy. Set in fictional Coconino County, the strip's landscape is based on Monument Valley, Arizona.
Over the course of more than 30 years, the strip’s format evolved:
- In 1910 the nameless strip that would become Krazy Kat first appeared at the bottom of another Herriman strip, The Dingbat Family (sometimes titled The Family Upstairs).
- In 1913, Krazy Kat became its own title, running vertically on the daily comics page.
- By 1916, Hearst, the publisher of the New York Evening Journal, had become a fan, championing Herriman by offering him a lifetime contract.
- In 1922, the first color Krazy Kat appeared on Saturdays, and Herriman’s gift for characterization and verbal and visual creativity was unleashed.
- From 1935 until Herriman’s death in 1944, it ran as a full-page color Sunday comic.
The strip was animated several times. Hearst produced the early Krazy Kat short films under Hearst-Vitagraph News Pictorial in 1916.
Weekend Sections
“Yes, you wanted a Sunday paper, but what you wanted from it wasn’t really news—it was your life” — Nicholson Baker, The World on Sunday (2005)
Weekend sections are supplemental inserts folded into a newspaper. They first appeared in the 1890s and could include a colorful magazine section, kid’s section, and comics section. Editors used them to boost circulation and as a valuable vehicle to lure in advertisers. In this pre-radio era, these sections were the source of home entertainment, intended to be savored over the rest days of the weekend. Sections were easy to share in a family; the main newspaper with “hard” news for the men, the magazine or lifestyle section for the women, and the comics section for the kids.
Illustrations and comics were a bridge to literacy for non-English speaking immigrants. Illustrators were famous and sought after in their day, but today most are virtually forgotten, victims of the ephemeral nature of newsprint. Their splendid illustrations were likely used to light the fire or clean the windows in the days following publication, and the originals recycled by the printers. They had served their purpose, to arrest attention, boost circulation, and draw in advertising revenue.
Magazine Sections
Initially, magazine sections aimed to set trends for women, with features focusing on the four Fs; Family, Food, Fashion, and Furnishing. Women managed the household budget, and advertisers wanted their attention. They expanded to include features of interest to the entire family, including articles on hobbies, entertainment, human interest stories, self-help, and advice columns. In addition, they carried full pages of dress patterns, sheet music, quizzes, and puzzles. Many women were recruited as staff writers. The covers and many inside pages were gloriously illustrated in full color and were deliberately designed to be eye-catching.
Kids’ Sections
It is truly remarkable that these pages have survived. They were designed to be used—to be cut up, colored, and disposed of because next week, and the week after, you could look forward to new delights wrapped up in your Sunday paper.
Early kids’ sections of the newspaper were full of hands-on activities. They included “magic” coloring pages and paper cutout toys, dolls, games, and moving picture devices. They often featured popular characters from the comics, like Happy Hooligan and the Katzenjammer family. Looking at them today, we see them as cleverly designed, beautifully illustrated learning resources. They provided affordable fun, play, and experimentation.
The woven water color set shown here was a way newspapers provided color for activity pages. The color saturated fabric squares were contained in an envelope issued free with the Chicago American. The squares were activated by water and could be used alone or mixed together for painting onto a printed page.
Sunday Comic Sections
The Sunday comics section is where the greatest imaginations of early American cartoonists set sail. Although often thought of as appealing primarily to kids, it was quietly enjoyed by the whole family. The color comics section emerged in the mid 1890s in Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers with the popularity of The Yellow Kid. From it sprang a new form of sequential art–leading to the later invention of the comic book and graphic novel.
The once glorious eight-page (or larger) comics section could include pages of two-, three-, or four-color printing. The printer’s colorists breathed life into the otherwise black-and-white linework crafted by the cartoonist with spectacular results. The examples included here range from beloved to obscure features, showing the variety of styles, storylines, and subject matter the comics tackled. From adventure to fairy tale, and abstraction to realism – there was something in the comics for everyone.
Artists from all over the world were recruited to contribute to the comics. The field was rapidly growing, and the artists were given full freedom and unfettered creative control to experiment and play with the use of their page that would become drastically limited a few decades later. Many of the cartoonists were children of immigrants–or immigrants themselves–and the characters they created reflected the complexity of American identity at the turn of the century. Unfortunately, newspaper comics also included racial stereotypes and other offensive messaging and imagery that would not be tolerated today.
While some strips were short-lived, others such as Popeye claimed a permanent place in the American imagination and remain household names to this day. Lesser-known titles are celebrated here for their inventiveness, inviting viewers to admire their creator’s joyful exploration of the form.
The San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum
In 1998, Blackbeard's ‘San Francisco Academy of Comic Art’ Collection arrived on campus in six semitrucks. Seventy-five tons of paper, the collection remains the largest our library system ever received.
The collection arrived in an assortment of old and acidic cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes, with no inventory or catalog. At the Billy Ireland, we have worked to rehouse the materials in acid free folders, polyester sleeves, and acid free boxes. Stabilizing the many early (pre-1930s) fragile and brittle pages has been our top priority.
Twenty-five years later, the process of unboxing, sorting, rehousing and cataloging this essential collection is still ongoing, and we are less than halfway through completing this work.
We are grateful for grants from the Getty Foundation and the Scripps Howard Foundations in 2000, and more recently in 2021 from the Hearst Foundation, which has helped fund this work. We are also grateful for the diligent work of Amy McCrory and Susan Liberator in making this collection more accessible.
To help us navigate the collection we have been creating online archival lists or ‘finding aids’ to record and share artists’ names, titles of comic strips, newspapers, and dates. Peruse the current holdings of the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection through our online finding aid.