>> Kaleena Black:
Hello everyone.
I'm Kaleena Black, and welcome
to today's Online Office Hours
at the Library of Congress.
Today we're going
to be exploring the Library's
comics art collection
and hearing from the
2019-2021 fellow.
This event will be
recorded, and any questions
or other participant
contributions may be made
publicly available as part
of the Library's archive.
We're really glad you can
join us either today live
or for those in the
future by recording.
And if this is your first
time in joining, welcome.
And if not, welcome back.
Just so you know, these Office
Hours are meant to be short
and informal sessions.
We're going to get started with
a 20-25 minute presentation,
and then we'll open it up
to Q and A and conversation.
You'll have a chance
to talk to each other
and to our presenters
via the chat,
and if you have any questions
during the presentation,
please feel free to post
them in the chat box.
So we want to get
started using the cat,
so if you could just
tell us your first name,
where you're joining us from,
and if you're a teacher,
the grade level and
subjects that you teach.
Just pop those in the chat box.
As I said, today's
episode is focused
on the Library's
comic art collection,
and we're really
lucky and very excited
to be joined by Martha Kennedy.
She's a curator in the
Photographs Division
of the Library of Congress.
And Richard Deverell is
this year's Swann fellow.
We're really excited to
have them with us today
and to learn more from them
and have them share
their expertise with us.
As I mentioned, if you have
any questions or comments
at any point, please feel free
to post them in the chat box.
We'll also be posting
some links as Martha
and Richard are speaking.
And any questions that come
up, if we can't answer them
in the chat, we'll be
happy to vocalize them
to our presenters during
Q and A. With that,
I'm going to pass it over to our
presenters, Martha and Richard.
Thanks.
>> Martha Kennedy:
Thank you, Kaleena.
Can everyone hear me all right?
>> Kaleena Black: Yep, we
can hear you just fine.
>> Martha Kennedy: Okay, great.
Thanks a lot, Kaleena for your
introduction and all your work
in arranging the program.
And thank all of
you for joining us.
We have many wonderful
opportunities these days
to attend amazing
online programs.
And as Kaleena said, I'm Martha
Kennedy, the curator of popular
and applied graphic art
in the Library's Prints
and Photographs Division.
Before I introduce our
speaker, Richard, who is going
to share insights from
his research on comics,
I'm going to give
a brief overview
of comics-related
Library materials,
mainly digitized forms, that
are available for research.
And if we could have
the next slide, please.
Thank you.
There are links embedded in
this slide and the next one.
And so to start, the Prints and
Photographs Division is home
to multiple collections
of comics and cartoon art.
These include an estimated
129,000 original cartoon
drawings and prints.
Some collections have online
item-level catalog records
of digitized images.
Many, but not all, of
these records have images.
Three collections that I
want to mention briefly
that contain original
comic strip
and comic book drawings are the
Swann Collection of Caricature
and Cartoon, and it has record
for over 400 comic strips
and over 20 comic book pages.
The Cartoon Drawings Collection
also have over 400 records
for comic strips and
more than 40 records
for comic book page drawings.
And Wood Collection of
Cartoons and Caricature Drawings
which has bout 200 digitized
comic strips drawings,
and there are going to
be many more to come.
Examples from these and other
collections date from the 1890s
to very close to the present.
They include early
groundbreaking often beautiful
American comics, classic
20th century strips
and even some 21st century
comics, including some
that are born digital.
The Serials and Government
Publications Division holds the
largest publicly accessible
collection of comic books,
including 12,000 titles
with a total of 140,000,
more than 140,000
issues of mainly American
but also some foreign examples.
And appointment is
needed to study
and view pieces from
this collection.
I'll also mention the Serials
Reading Room often have small
changing displays
of comic books.
So if you're on site,
fun to check those out.
And one more point
before the next slide,
the Manuscripts division holds
comics-related collections,
including the Fredric Wertham
papers that has relevance
to Richard's research.
And moving on to the
next slide, please.
The Library's website
online versions
of exhibitions that
feature comics.
And these include
researched captions and texts
that accompany the images
and give context to them.
These online exhibitions
represent an underutilized
resource and is very helpful in
teaching and inspiring research.
The newest one is
titled Comic Art:
120 Years of Panels and Pages.
And we saw the opening image
to the exhibit brochure
in the preceding slide.
The web comics, web archives,
focuses on comics
created for the web.
It's another exciting
online collection
that has been growing
since June 2014.
Chronicling America is a rich
resource for researching comics
and other kinds of cartoons.
It contains more than 2,100
historic American public domain
newspapers dating
from 1789 to 1963.
And I'll just mention,
I'm working on a LibGuide
for caricatures and cartoons
that will give more
detailed guidance to more
of the Library's
resources in this field
than I can do right now.
I hope this glimpse into
the Library's comic-related
resources will encourage you to
explore and make use of them.
And now it's my pleasure,
my great pleasure,
to introduce our speaker
today, Richard Deverell,
a Swann fellow for 2019-2020.
The Swann Foundation for
caricature and cartoons is one
of the few that supports
scholarly graduate research
in the growing field
of comic studies.
Richard is a PhD candidate in
history at the State University
of New York at Buffalo.
His talk today comes
from his dissertation
on the Comics Code Authority,
using it to examine the role
of business and moral
entrepreneurs.
He has published writings on
comics artists and is a member
of the American Historical
Association
and the Comic Book
Legal Defense Fund.
We look forward to him sharing
his knowledge of and insights
to this very intriguing topic.
So thank you, and now I'd like
to hand it over to Richard.
>> Richard D. Deverell:
Thank you, Martha.
Can everyone hear me all right?
Cool. Okay, so some background
is necessary for those
who are unaware of what the
Comics Code Authority was.
The Comics Code Authority arose
out of Cold War era concerns
over juvenile delinquency.
In the 1930s and 1940s,
comic books were a quick form
of entertainment for
readers of all ages
with US military sending
35,000 copies of Superman
to soldiers each month
during World War II.
The large juvenile
readership of comics began
to attract added
scrutiny, however,
with literary critic Sterling
North publishing the first op ed
against the fledgling
medium in 1940.
Dr. Fredric Wertham,
a child psychologist,
was the most vocal critic
during the public debate
over comic books in the late
1940s through the mid-1950s.
He was interested in the
effect of violence on society
and defined the term broadly.
For example, Dr. Wertham
testified about the effects
of segregation on child
development in Delaware
in a case that was
later combined
with the US Supreme
Court's ruling
in Brown v. Board of Education.
In his work on comic books,
Wertham wrote primarily
for housewives urging them to
take action in shaping policy.
He published in the Saturday
Review of Literature as well
as the Ladies Home Journal
prevising his book Seduction
of the Innocent in which he
outlined what he perceived
as the portrayal of violence,
horror and sexual deviancy.
Wertham used Seduction
of the Innocent to rile
up the grassroots and push
for top down legislation.
He implored his readers,
what must happen to the minds
of children before
parents will give
up these amateurish extra
legal self-regulating committee
activities and ask
for efficient, legal,
democratic protection
for their children.
In 1954, Wertham escalated
the issue to the point
that the highest
levels of government had
to take notice serving
as the representative
of white middle class families
concerns to the Senate.
The Senate subcommittee on
juvenile delinquency succeeded
in pressuring comic
book publishers
to adopt more stringent
methods of self-censorship
through the Comics
Magazine Association
of America's comic's code,
thereby alleviating the bulk
of the concern as the code
prohibited most of the materials
that moreover farmers
found objectionable.
Wertham testified
about the portrayal
of violence and comic books.
William M. Gaines, the
publisher of EC comics,
attempted to defend
horror stories,
pointing out how they
worked as allegories
to discuss social
issues like racism.
Unfortunately, he faced
the committee predisposed
to dislike comics.
When the committee
finished its work,
the chairman supported industry
self-censorship to remove crime
and horror comic books.
The comic book publishers
got the message,
and on September 7th, 1954,
the Comics Magazine Association
of America achieved legal
recognition with six directors
from Toby Press, Allen Hardy
Associates, Famous Funnies,
Stanhill Publications, National
Comics, later called DC,
and Magazine Management
Company, later called Marvel.
The CMAA appointed Judge
Charles Murphy as its head
to oversee content
in the comic books.
The first code adopted
that year,
effectively banned
horror and crime comics.
The comic book market contracted
in the immediate aftermath
of the Seduction of the Innocent
and the Senate hearings.
Looking for a way to
reinvigorate the medium,
comic book writers, artists
and publishers returned
to the superhero genre that
had waned after World War II.
One strategy for those in
the comic book industry
to change their image, now
that the public primarily
viewed comics as a cheap medium
for children, was to work
within the code while
supporting social authorities
such as the Federal
Government's war on drugs
or political campaigns.
The other strategy was
to rebel against some
of the restrictive measures of
the comics code while implicitly
or explicitly supporting others
or to fully reject the code
and work as outsiders.
Significantly, rebelling against
the code did not necessarily
mean rejecting contemporary
political ideas.
Marvel portrayed Spiderman as
denouncing drugs at the behest
of the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare
under the Nixon administration.
In 1970, Stan Lee received
a letter from the Department
of Health, Education and Welfare
asking him to tackle the issue
of drug abuse in his comics.
In his letter, Michael
F. White write,
we feel that Marvel Comics could
provide a vital public service
to many young Americans by
assisting in the dissemination
of factual information
on drug abuse.
While Lee could easily have
assigned an artist and write
to make a promotional comic, he
instead incorporate the issue
of drug abuse into the
story Green Goblin Reborn,
appearing in Amazing
Spiderman numbers 96 through 98
in which Spiderman's friend,
Harry Osborn overdoses on pills.
Though the comics code did not
specifically ban the portrayal
of drugs, it contained
a catchall band
against all elements
or techniques not
specifically mentioned herein
but which are contrary to the
spirit and intent of the code
and are considered violations
of good taste or decency.
The Comics Code Authority
rejected the story
on these grounds.
Rather than change the story
and resubmit it for approval,
Lee and Marvel decided
to publish it anyway
without the seal of approval.
Their decision made
national news
with the New York
Times discussing it
under the headline,
Comic Magazine Defies
Code Ban on Drug Stories.
Lee said, if this story
would help one kid anywhere
in the world not to try drugs
or to lay off drugs
one day earlier,
then it's worth defying the
code rather than waiting
for the Code Authority
to give permission.
His decision elicited a less
than enthusiastic response
from other publishers, however.
John Goldwater continued to
oppose any stories dealing
with drugs, even
though as president
of the Comics Magazine
Association of America,
he would not punish Marvel
because he believed everyone
is entitled to one slip.
Carmine Infantino,
the publisher at DC,
urged patience saying I will
not in any shape or form put
out a comic magazine without the
proper authorities scrutinizing
it so that it does not do any
harm, not only to the industry
but also to the children
who read it.
Only four months before,
Code Administrator Leonard
Darvin said in an interview
that he frowned on any change
in the code with respect
to narcotics, but he could
foresee changes that would
at least liberalize some
provisions on sex to reflect
if only slightly, the
new permissiveness
in motion pictures.
Ironically, the opposite
occurred as Lee's choice
to publish without approval
and the positive attention
it received in the press led
to the first significant
revision of the code
in 1971 allowing the portrayal
of narcotics and drug addiction,
as long as the writers made it
clear it was a vicious habit
while sex was still
handled conservatively.
In addition
to the aforementioned
New York Times coverage,
Tim Ferris of Rolling Stone
praised the story summarizing
Spiderman's actions
against drug pushers.
The High Acres Collegiate,
published at the Hazleton campus
of Penn State University,
celebrated the easing
of code restrictions
with a headline,
Big Brothers' Bubble Burst.
In its revisions in 1971,
the code permitted the use
of vampires or werewolves when
handled in the classic tradition
such as Frankenstein
and Dracula.
Marvel, for one, wasted no time
in launching their
Dracula comic immediately
after the code revision in 1971,
while DC began to address issues
of poverty, race relations
and drug use in Green Lantern.
The success of Amazing Spiderman
numbers 96 through 98 led
to the rise of the
urban folktale in books
like Green Lantern Green
Arrow, which absorbed
and redirected the burgeoning
language of identity politics
in the post-civil rights period.
These civil rights
messages mixed with fears
of the city following white
light leading to a perception
of cities as havens of lower
class violence, Neal Adams
and Dennis O'Neil's tenure
on Green Lantern engaged
with issues of racial
tensions and housing
and the public debate over
drug use and its connection
in the late 1960s and early
1970s to the counterculture.
As a DC product,
Green Lantern tended
to be a bit more conservative
than Marvel's heroes,
reflecting the color blind
suburban discourse that emerged
in the late 1960s, and that
empowered white collar middle
class families to position
themselves as moderates
between what they perceived as
the extremes of Southern racism
and civil rights activists,
thereby ultimately affirming
their race and class privilege.
In this manner, Green Lantern
and Green Arrow reinforced
the emerging idea
of breadwinner conservatism
while they served
as moral authorities
who might make mistakes
but eventually learn form
them and reinforce the site
of moral authority
and father figures.
Neal Adams and Dennis O'Neil
forced their cosmic adventurer,
the Green Lantern, to face
systemic Earth-bound problems
such as poverty, slumlord,
landlords and racism beginning
with the April 1970 story No
Evil Shall Escape my Sight.
While Green Lantern initially
sides with the landlord
against the adolescents
harassing him,
Green Arrow shows
him the suffering
of the building's tenants.
On the building's roof,
an elderly black man approaches
Green Lantern and questions him
about why superheroes don't
address civil rights issues,
opening up the opportunity for
comic book writers and artists
to tell more than just the
villain of the month stories.
Within the story, Green Lantern
and Green Arrow find a way
to gather evidence
that will lead
to the slumlord's imprisonment.
But O'Neil and Adams
make it clear
that their work is not done
in the epilogue to the story.
The Guardians of Oa seek
to punish Green Lantern
for acting without their leave.
The Green Arrow argues
for intervening
and civil rights issues.
Arrow's words move the Guardians
of Oa, leading them to send one
of their own to Earth disguised
as a human to travel the country
like Jack Kerouac and learn
about the problems
facing Americans.
At the time that Adams
and O'Neil were writing,
housing in the North grew
increasingly segregated
sometimes through sundown
laws but more commonly
through restrictive covenants
and racially discriminatory
lending policies.
Northern white homeowners
fought to keep undesirables
out of neighborhoods amid
black migration to the North.
Meanwhile, racial tensions amid
white light shaped suburban
whites' impression of
the city as consisting
of lower class ethnic islands.
Ironically, while
Adams and O'Neil sought
to humanize those living
in inner city slums,
they traded on some of the
same visual stereotypes
to tell their story,
thereby demonstrating some
of the limitations of the
short form comic book format.
In the August 1971 story
Snowbirds Don't Fly,
some teens attempt to
mug Green Arrow while
in his civilian identity
as Oliver Queen.
One shoots him with a crossbow,
and Queen recognizes the
arrow as one of his own.
He and Green Lantern find
where the teens reside
with one begging the building
manager to let him in.
The begging teen cries and
shakes, leaving Green Lantern
to reveal is ignorance
as he fails
to recognize the
symptoms of withdrawal.
Arrow responds, Lantern,
you can be dumb.
The boy's a snowbird.
He's on dope.
Apparently browed [phonetic] in
as a salesman, a blasted pusher.
And that's as low
as anybody can sink.
Green Lantern and Green Arrow
convince the young addict
to take them to the
flophouse of the other teens
where Arrow finds his sidekick
Speedy amongst the strung
out youths.
He believes that Speedy
was working undercover
to find the man behind
the narcotics ring.
Noticing that Speedy
appears pale,
Green Arrow recommends he rest
while they pursue the leaders
of the drug ring.
Throughout the story, Green
Arrow and Green Lantern moralize
about drug use, showing
their shock
that anyone would use heroin.
Dennis O'Neil and Neal
Adams offer one explanation
through Speedy who says,
say a young cat has
someone he respects,
looks up to, an older man.
And say the older man leaves,
chases around the country,
gets involves with others
and ignores his young friend.
Then the guy might need a
substitute for friendship.
He might see it in junk.
Adams portrays Speedy sitting
on a footstool leaning forward
with his arms spread as he
reaches out to the adults
in his life seeking
understanding.
Naturally, both Green Lantern
and Green Arrow dismiss his
explanation as a sob story.
As they each go about
their own business,
Green Arrow enters Speedy's room
to offer him some chili only
to find Speedy gripping
his bicep with a packet
of powder next to him.
Arrow exclaims, oh dear
God, you are on drugs.
You're really a junkie.
Speedy responds, who else did
you think I was talking about?
This twist ending concludes the
story, leaving readers waiting
to find out what happens next.
Interestingly, the cover art
for this story features Speedy
and Green Arrow posed much the
same as here in the final panel
that included a syringe
and spoon along
with a packet of drugs.
The story itself directly
builds upon the addict pusher
dichotomy, portraying
the young heroin users
as sympathetic victims have
browed him, though it breaks
from the model in
portraying addicts
of color as victims as well.
As promoters of comic
books' cultural power,
O'Neil and Adams sought to
empathize with the concerns
of their readers, who saw
scenes of race riots and Vietnam
on the nightly television.
The comics played a role
in the national discussion
by dispelling these issues
into short form narratives
that readers could
easily understand even
as they reflected some
racialized discourses
about drug use and poverty.
In the 1980s, the Comic Codes
Authority's power further
lessened following the changes
to the code in the 1970s
and the expanding outlet
for more adult material
in the direct market.
Though the Codes'
Authority declined,
it protected the industry
from moral entrepreneurs writing
the neoconservative agenda
to critique popular culture,
pressuring department stores
into not carrying music
by certain artists,
theaters into not screening
certain movies while taking
sideways jabs at comics.
For example, during this time,
Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett
Koop warned children were
becoming addicted to
video games body and soul.
While in September 1985,
the Parents Music Resource
Center held hearings
investigating the supposedly
pornographic content
of rock music, leading to the
creation of a warning label.
The protections of the
Comics Code Authority
and the direct market,
even if they only served
as a paper shield, enabled
comic book promoters
to explore more adult
content during a period
in which the new right
invoked the concept
of family values and
policy decisions.
Even as mainstream comic book
publishers began discussing
sexuality and deconstructing
heroic architypes,
the code made it
possible for them
to create a two-tiered
publishing system
that some books for general
readers, including children,
and others featuring more mature
content that would not appear
on traditional newsstands.
This two-tiered system
also worked
to uphold the news rights agenda
as the code approved newsstand
comic books featured material
safely ensconced in the
realm of family values.
The decade closed with the
final revision to the comic code
in 1989, though the changes
within the industry made
this revision less notable
than the one in 1971
that broke down barriers
to allow discussions of
narcotic use or elements
and limited depictions
of crime and corruption.
Under Vice-President Executive
Editor Dick Giordano's lead,
DC threatened to leave the
Comics Magazine Association
of America in the late
1980s, but the publisher
in the organization arranged
to compromise to allow
for more liberalization
culminating
in the final revision in 1989.
Marvel finally left the
code in 2001, and in 2011,
DC and Archie Comics followed
suit ending the Comics
Code Authority.
Ironically, the Comic Book Legal
Defense Fund currently owns the
rights to the seal of
approval and uses it
to promote anti-censorship work.
Though this presentation
condenses events for time,
it demonstrates the nebulous
position of comic books
as a form of media in postwar
America and the path those
within the comic book
industry took to advocate
for the cultural value of
their work in comparison
to other media such as film and
prose fiction due to its ability
to resist censorship and/or work
with established authorities.
Thank you.
>> Kaleena Black:
Great, thank you so much.
We'll have a chance
to get the chat.
There's some discussion.
So please, if anybody has any
questions, please feel free
to post them in the chat box.
And Richard can either
respond there or, you know,
we can have a discussion
out loud.
And thank you, Martha, for
that wonderful introduction
to comics art collection.
I'm sure there'll be some
questions about that.
But as we're waiting for
any questions to come
in about either the Library's
comics art collection
or Richard's specific research
or his larger dissertation,
I just wanted to just kick
things off with a question
to you, Richard, about, I
guess, how you got to this topic
or this particular
question in your research.
Just talk a little
bit about that.
>> Richard D. Deverell:
Well, to be perfect honest,
I've been a comic
book fan and a nerd
since as long as I can remember.
So, I began reading more about
the history of comic books
when I was, I don't know,
maybe 11 or so, looking back
on everything that came
before the stuff that I grew
up with as a younger kid.
And that naturally led me
to more academic studies.
And then I was lucky both as
an undergraduate, Rockport
and as a graduate student
doing my master's at Rockport
and now doing my PhD at SUNY
Buffalo to have teachers
who encouraged me to
look at this academically
and view this material
as something worthy
of academic scholarship
and to support my research.
>> Kaleena Black: Great, and
there's a question actually
about your larger dissertation.
So can you talk a
little bit about that?
>> Richard D. Deverell: Yeah.
I see that question there.
So the larger dissertation
covers everything
from the early 40s when
the first critiques
of comic books began arising
up through even some current
censorship that's going on now,
both for comic strip artists
and comic book writers.
It also takes into
account underground comics.
I think there was a question
or someone mentioned that some
of the more underground
material, yeah,
someone mentioned earlier
that the underground
material discussed more
about drugs and sexuality.
And so I do look at
the underground comics
in the larger dissertation
because they offer a
radical alternative
to mainstream comics, because
they completely rejected
the code.
And so they were able just to
kind of do whatever they wanted.
But the downside was they
faced more state action
for censorship.
So one thing I've noticed is
that the code offered some
protection both to publishers
and to comic book distributors,
so like comic shops
and newsstands, whereas the
underground comics were kind
of on their own.
And so beginning in the 60s,
you do start to see some arrests
of distributors of
underground comics
for violating local
obscenity laws.
And that continues
even until now.
There is a case, I might be
wrong, but I believe it was 2004
where Plant Comics in Oklahoma,
the owners of that were arrested
for accidently putting some
more adult books in a free pile
for kids at Halloween.
And so you still see these cases
of local obscenity laws kind
of acting to police
distribution,
even though the code
might not be in effect.
>> Kaleena Black:
Thanks for that.
And another question right
after that one is whether you're
looking at non-code magazines
that Marvel did and
companies like Warren was one
that was mentioned here.
>> Richard D. Deverell:
With Marvel,
I do look at Stan Lee's
attempts to create a black
and white spectacular Spiderman
comic, which was kind of shot
down pretty quick because
the Code Authorities realized
that this would be outside their
purview if it was published
through Marvel's, or rather
Marvel's parent company's
magazine division.
So Stan Lee put out a couple
issues, and he promised
that it would still adhere
to the code's standards,
even though it didn't have to,
so that way there
wouldn't be any confusion
between what was a code-approved
Spiderman story and what wasn't.
But eventually, that
kind of fizzled out.
With Warren, I do look at some
other work like Vampirella,
and I believe it was Bill
Swelling [phonetic] published
in Vampirella Magazine about
his experience being arrested
for selling some of
Robert Crumb's Zeth Comics.
So the letters sections in these
magazines are just as valuable
as the stories themselves,
because you really get
to se how people are engaging
with these themes
in the time period.
So I do use those
to a certain extent.
>> Kaleena Black: That's a great
segue into the next question
which is, I guess
personally a question for you,
but also a question
I guess for Martha
and our Library colleagues
who are joining us today.
But how did you use the Library
of Congress collection
for your research?
That's a question
in the chat box.
>> Richard D. Deverell: Oh,
well partly I used the Fredric
Wertham papers because I wanted
to broaden my look at him.
In a lot of comic book
histories, he kind of comes
across as a boogey man.
And it's hard to escape
the immediate impact
of his anti-comics crusade.
Like it did cause a lot of
people to lose their jobs.
But I wanted to put
him in context
of the cold war and
civil rights.
And so his correspondence at the
Library helped me to do that.
There's a letter I
cited in the paper
that accompanies this
presentation where he was
in contact with, where is
it here, I can't find it
at the moment, I believe
it was Thurgood Marshall.
But he was in contact with
civil rights authorities,
so I used his letters
to help broaden that.
I also used the comic books
in the Library's collection
in the periodicals collection
because they have the
original coloring.
They have the ads that
accompanied the comics.
There are good reprints out
there of these materials
and good volumes
that reprint them,
but they just typically
have the stories.
They're heavily recolored
because it's new paper.
It's not the pulp paper that
comic books were printed on.
And they leave out all the
ads, all of the letters pages,
and those can be
really informative.
For example, in the
dissertation,
I look at Marvel's horror line,
things like their
Dracula comics,
and there were people
writing in to complain
because Dracula would react
by swearing whenever
he saw holy relics
like a crucifix or
a Star of David.
And someone wrote in to
complain about this portrayal,
and Marvel had to explain
that, well Dracula's a bad guy.
You know, he's a monster.
He's not supposed to
favor these holy objects.
So they had to put that
context in the letters section.
But that's not in the
collected edition.
So being able to
access all of that
through the Library has
been really helpful.
>> Kaleena Black: That's great.
And actually, would love to hear
from Martha a little
bit on this too.
One question that
came in, Martha,
was about the Library's
comic collection.
So can you say a little bit
about when the Library
started collecting comic books?
>> Martha Kennedy:
Oh, actually one
of my colleagues would be
better at answering that.
The Library's --
>> Kaleena Black: --
one of your colleagues?
>> Martha Kennedy:
Yeah, maybe [Inaudible]
or Meagan Houseman [phonetic].
We're in, in P and P
we mainly have the,
we have original comic art.
But one thing that I
thought would be interesting
to mention is that Richard was
very, he was very attentive
to finding some of
the original drawings
that had the comics
code stamp on the back.
And you know, that
was interesting to me
because I had not paid that
much attention to it earlier.
And this was when we were
looking for possible images
to help promote his
talk earlier.
Pre-pandemic.
>> Kaleena Black: Right.
What about the comic art
collection you mentioned?
>> Martha Kennedy: Oh,
the comic art collection?
I mean that's just, that
is simply a catchall
for all the collections
in P and P that, you know,
include original drawings for
comic strips and comic books.
And we have, I mean the
collections are amazing.
They are huge.
We have a lot that
have been scanned
and have item level records.
I just singled out sort of a
few in the old [inaudible].
But there are many more.
And there's nothing like
seeing the original depending
on what kind of research
you're doing.
And really, the Library
has world class holdings
in this area.
And so, and I hope, you know,
we're getting more opportunities
in the present in
recent past to show some
of this original comic art.
We have a lot of other
kinds of cartoons too,
editorial cartoons, political
cartoons, humor cartoons
and gag cartoons as well.
>> Kaleena Black: Right,
and we did an Office Hour
with your colleague Sara Duke,
from Prints and Photographs
about 20th century
political cartoons.
So if anyone's interested,
you can check
out the online Office Hours
site and see the materials
from that presentation.
And if any colleagues
from either serial
and government locations are
with us today and can weigh in,
that would be really helpful.
But Martha, I wanted to
ask you a little bit more
about your work.
There's also questions
actually here about Richard,
Richard's presentation.
But I'm curious if your work
and your role as curator
in the Prints and
Photographs Division
and what your work entails.
>> Martha Kennedy: Well, it
entails, first and foremost,
really helping researchers
and the public navigate access
to the collections, whether it's
through, you know, actual visits
to the reading room or online.
Also, helping to
develop the collections
through acquisitions,
through gifts,
through limited purchasing.
And just keeping our ears
to the ground about ways
to keep developing
the collections.
And digital increasingly, more
digital and hybrid digital
and hand-drawn comics are
becoming more and more a part
of our collection
strategy these days.
The other big part is
outreach in various ways
through exhibitions,
special displays.
We love, within reasonable
limits,
we really welcome classes coming
and visiting, cartoonists,
artists of different kind come
into the reading room and,
you know, sharing some of
this wonderful original art
that we have.
Does that help?
Does that answer your question?
>> Kaleena Black: Yes, yields
many more questions, but yes,
that will answer my
immediate question.
And I see that our [audio
drop] Sara and Georgia
from the Library has
been weighing in,
which is really helpful.
One question I saw that
came up a little while ago,
I actually think, you know,
really affects both you,
Marth and Richard, and it was
a question about the impact
of the pandemic on
your research, Richard.
So, how has that, obviously
here we are in a virtual space,
and you're sharing
your presentation
when it would have
happened normally on site.
But in what other ways has the
pandemic affected your research?
>> Richard D. Deverell: For
me I've been relatively lucky
that I got pretty much all
my research done before
the pandemic.
So I was fairly lucky that way.
I mean this presentation
was originally going to be
in a different format.
So I'm very thankful to
you and your team, Kaleena,
by helping to make
this possible.
But one nice thing about my
research is when I'm looking
for original issues or
interviews in fanzines
and other magazines is
that all that stuff is just
out there for sale on eBay.
So I've joked to my advisor
that one advantage I have
in my research is
that I can buy some
of my primary sources on eBay.
Obviously, some of the
comics I can't afford.
They're, you now, ones
that are first appearances.
They're rare issues, and that's
not something I can really get a
hold of or afford.
But some other stuff
that I'm willing
to take an issue that's
maybe just in good condition
but will have what I need to
be able to read and analyze,
I've been lucky that way.
But yeah, it has, it's
more been an issue of kind
of stoppering [phonetic]
the original plan
for this presentation,
though I have got a good deal
of writing done because
I've been housebound.
>> Kaleena Black: Right.
Right. Well, you know,
we're really [audio drop]
you're willing and able
to share your [inaudible] and
your insights on this topic.
I did see another question
about the specific collection.
So you mentioned the Wertham
papers at the Library.
And there was a question
about, I think,
what you found most interesting.
I'm not sure if you answered
it already in the chat,
but if you find most
interesting,
what you found most interesting
in that collection or even
in other collections that you
encountered that you used.
>> Richard D. Deverell: With the
Wertham papers, it was just kind
of going through the letters
and seeing what causes
he was involved in.
So I was trying to get
a more holistic approach
or holistic view
of who the man was.
Bart Beaty has done a
phenomenal biography on him,
and there's another book
out there about his work
with psychology and
in New York City.
That's Gabriel Mendes' book
Under the Strain of Color.
But being able to actually go
through the papers and kind
of get a feel based on his
correspondence was very helpful.
You know, again trying
to break past viewing him
as just this boogie man to
the comic book industry.
But also being able
to handle some
of these original comics
that the Library has.
I mean some of them are ones
that are very expensive.
And the fact that they're
available for public researchers
to use and to study is
just something that's very,
very useful.
It's invaluable for people
that are helping to work
on this new field of comic
book studies that's been,
it's really grown a lot over
the last 20 years or so.
So it was just a
great experience.
>> Kaleena Black: And you
mentioned at the top of this,
this is obviously condensed,
but part of your dissertation.
And so I wondered,
I guess, you know,
where does the research
go from here?
You know, what kinds of, what
are questions that you're trying
to explore next in your research
or possible other projects
that you see in the near term?
>> Richard D. Deverell: One
thing that has been kind
of going through my mind a
little bit is noticing how large
the role of 1980s pop
culture has become lately.
A lot of people looking
back on the 80s,
and especially even comic book
companies you see them reaching
back to those stories.
Like there's a lot of Watchman
spinoffs that DC has published
in addition to the HBO
miniseries that they just had.
Marvel has kind of gone back
and done a new Secret
Wars storyline recently.
So looking back on what it was
about that decade in comics
that has kind of
made it something
that the industry
keeps reaching back to.
So that's something I've
been pondering a little bit.
And maybe it'll make it into
the epilogue of my dissertation.
Maybe it'll just be something
I write separately later.
But that's kind of where I'm at.
>> Kaleena Black: Cool.
Well, thanks.
Go ahead.
>> Martha Kennedy:
I've got a question.
Sorry I'm not using
the chat box.
This is more [inaudible].
I was struck by how really sort
of rapidly the comics
code was revised in 1971.
Since the, you know,
since you related sort
of a chronology there with
the Spiderman issues appearing
in May/June without approval.
And then the, and then
by October of 1971,
after Marvel's issues, DC Comics
publishes an issue dealing with,
you know, an issue
reflecting concern over drugs.
I mean was that a
result of reader response
and publishers realizing
that the publishers sort of,
even though they were opposed
to changing the comics code
at first and decided
that they should do it?
Does that make sense,
my question?
>> Richard D. Deverell: No,
no I understand what you mean.
So with Marvel, both
companies had been kind
of testing the waters of
how much they could get away
with for a little bit.
And from what I've read with
in other newspaper accounts
after Marvel published
their story,
it looks like DC had already
been developing some stories
that would tackle
more social issues.
And they were kind of working
behind the scenes to see
if they could get some
approval for a little bit.
As for the story about
Speedy doing drugs,
that came a little bit later,
after the revision allowed it.
And in fact, the portrayal
of Speedy doing drugs is,
I would argue, more shocking
than Harry Osbourne
taking generic pills.
>> Martha Kennedy:
Yeah, definitely.
>> Richard D. Deverell: Yeah,
here's this teenage sidekick
shooting up right on the cover.
So, DC I would say was kind of
a little bit slower than Marvel
or at least trying to
work behind the scenes.
Marvel made a big
splash and, of course,
that helped to put more pressure
on the Comics Magazine
Association
of America to change the code.
I see someone talking
about the fact that,
Mike Rhode here is saying
that they were reaching
out to young fans and hiring
young fans, and that's true.
They were bringing in younger
talent who had kind of grown
up in the fan culture.
And that was helping
to encourage more creative
storylines as well.
So there were a number
of factors
that went into the revision.
>> Martha Kennedy: Thank you.
>> Richard D. Deverell: It was
rather rapid that it happened.
>> Martha Kennedy: Yeah,
I was struck by that.
Thank you, yeah.
>> Kaleena Black: Great.
Thank you [inaudible].
I hope you'll have a chance
to take a look at the chat.
There's some comments and some
responses to what you've said.
And hopefully, I didn't miss
too many questions here.
I think I got most of them.
But thank you both so
much for joining us today.
Richard, for sharing
your research
and sharing how you have
used the Library's collection
and other collections.
And Martha [audio drop].
So it should post in the chat
box, see if I can get it,
the link to the Ask
a Librarian feature
if there are any
lingering questions
about comics collection.
And, you know, that question
that couldn't get addressed
here, please feel free
to [inaudible] an inquiry
to a reference librarian,
and they can [audio drop].
One last question that
came in just now is
about your dissertation
whether any parts
of it are in print yet.
>> Richard D. Deverell: Not yet.
I'm still in the process of
revising it, so we'll see
if I can find the right outlet
for some of the chapters.
The chapters are nice and
thematic, like I was able
to break down material for this
presentation pretty quickly,
so I'm hopeful that I'll be able
to find an outlet
for some of it soon.
But at the moment, my
head's all in revision mode.
>> Kaleena Black: Fair enough.
Fair enough.
And yeah, it's great
working with you two.
Martha, thank you for your note.
And I see that my colleague
Dana has posted the link
to the Ask a Librarian link.
So if you have other questions,
please feel free to send them
to the reference
librarians here.
>> Martha Kennedy:
Yeah, thank you.
>> Kaleena Black: So if there
aren't any other questions,
thank you all so
much for joining us.
This is actually our last Online
Office Hour of the summer.
So, it's been great to
spend this summer with you.
We posted the link to the
Online Office Hours webpage
if you're looking for
information or details
or materials of past
presentations that was done,
please feel free
to refer to that.
And please check back on
our website for details
about programming for the fall.
And we look forward to sharing
more of the Library's resources,
sharing more of, that the
experts here have to share
and really trying to connect
with what you're interested in.
So in the meantime, have
a great rest of the week.
And we hope to see you at
a future program very soon.
And thanks again
to the presenters.
>> Martha Kennedy: Thank you.
>> Richard D. Deverell:
Thank you.
>> Martha Kennedy: Thank you.
>> Kaleena Black:
Take care everyone.