Image:  Matsumoto, Akira (Reiji). Aoi Hanabira (Blue Petals) (Tokyo: Showa Manga Shuppansha, 1958).

The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum will celebrate women’s history month and its international holdings with the opening of World of Shojo Manga! Mirrors of Girls’ Desires, a traveling exhibit curated by Masami Toku, Dept. of Art and Art History, CSU-Chico.

Image:  J.S. Pughe. “IF – The Inaugural Dinner at the White House.” Puck, June 29, 1904.

This exhibition will examine the role William Randolph Hearst played in the birth of newspaper comics and trace the 100-year history of King Features Syndicate, the company he founded to develop and distribute comics, columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles, and games around the world.

Image:  Will Eisner, “The Spirit”, October 9, 1949, Spirit Weekly page 1. Will Eisner Collection, The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. THE SPIRIT and WILL EISNER are Registered Trademarks of Will Eisner Studios, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

It is nearly impossible to discuss the history of American comics without mentioning the name Will Eisner. On August 16, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum will open a new exhibit entitled Will Eisner: 75 Years of Graphic Storytelling, highlighting works from the library’s holdings. The show will feature original art from some of Eisner’s greatest works including The Spirit, Contract With God, Dropsie Avenue, Last Day in Vietnam, and The Plot, as well as rarely-seen selections from his student days, his early work as a commercial artist, and his comics for the military. As a key figure in the birth of the comics industry in the 1930s and the rise of the graphic novel in the 1980s, Eisner influenced—directly and indirectly—everyone involved with graphic storytelling, as an artist, an editor, an entrepreneur and an educator. This exhibit explores the range of Eisner’s work spanning nearly eight decades and documents his impact on the development of comics over the past century.

Image: Karl Hubenthal. In the March, March 26, 1965. Karl Hubenthal Collection.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum presents The Long March: Civil Rights in Cartoons and Comics. The exhibit presents the story of the Civil Rights Movement and its impact through original editorial cartoons, comic strips, and comic books drawn from the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum’s collections. It will also include artwork drawn by Nate Powell, for March, Congressman John Lewis’s graphic memoir, a New York Times Bestseller co-written by Andrew Aydin, about his experiences as a leader and activist in the movement. The exhibit explores the tensions, struggles, and victories from multiple perspectives, including mainstream daily newspapers and the black press.

Image: Chester Gould, Dick Tracy, May 29, 1960. Chester Gould Collection.

Take a look through cartoonist Daniel Clowes’s incredibly informed, sometimes surprising historical perspective. Ohio State’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum is the world’s largest repository of cartoon art. To complement his survey concurrently on view, we invited Clowes—who, like many cartoonists, is a great student of his field’s history—to collaborate with the museum’s curators in presenting an exhibition of work by past greats whom he admires or considers influences. In works such as the comic book anthology series Eightball (1989–2004) and the graphic novel Wilson (2010), Clowes illustrates in a wide spectrum of styles that often incorporate, adapt, and comment on touchstones from comics history. Drawing from the museum’s collection, the work on view in this exhibition at the Wex illuminates Clowes’s range, encompassing Chester Gould’s hard-boiled detective strip Dick Tracy, the minimal elegance of Otto Soglow’s The Little King, the Art Nouveau–inspired fantasias of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, the action-adventure stories of Terry and the Pirates (created by Ohio State’s own Milton Caniff), and even the ever-popular Peanuts by Charles Schulz.