"Man Saves Comics": collector amassed a treasure trove of a forgotten artform

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Originally published at: "Man Saves Comics": collector amassed a treasure trove of a forgotten artform | Boing Boing

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My pop culture historian heart is grateful for this guy!

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Wow.

Nice work, fella.

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The social significance of newspaper comics in the 20th century is totally forgotten today. Syndicated newspaper comics were read by proportions of the U.S. population that would be unfathomable for any medium today.

I’m reminded of the story of Mayor LaGuardia and the newspaper strike.

Thank goodness for amateur archivists like Mr. Blackbeard.

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I’m astounded the floor didn’t cave in.

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Bill Blackbeard is now referred to an “eccentric scholar,” and a hero, but I’m sure in his day he was referred to as an unrepentant hoarder.

I can’t see the video (not available in my country), but the photo shows a cleanly arranged shelf. A professional mover told me: one dividing line between “hoarder” and “not hoarder” is dysfunction: can you do the bare minimum of sleep, walk between rooms, go to the toilet, cook, and entertain yourself without having to move piles of things? Can you go about your day without risking damage or injury by knocking over piles of things? Yes - collector. No - hoarder.

It’s not a precise metric, but it’s a useful quick-and-dirty measure in the field. To the professional mover who told me this, the “hoarder / not hoarder” line sets how sensitive they need to be with the client’s things that look like junk. To a hoarder, there can be a level of emotional attachment to an empty coffee cup that the rest of us would have for a wedding ring.

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Any Canada friendly links for the video?

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That’s impressive! Mad respect!

I just got a bootleg hardcover book that has all of The Shadow news paper strips. The quality on some of it is kinda meh, as there are some that are basically lost media, and seem to be only on some archived microfilm, some of it from Austrailia.

I do have, somewhere, a funny paper I got from like 1907 or something like that… over 100 years old!

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