ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the history of institutional cartoon and comics collecting with a special focus on three critical pioneers in the United States whose work left a lasting legacy for comics scholars. It discusses the international efforts and end with some reflections on the current status of institutional collecting. The premier issue featured the transcript of a panel held at the Popular Culture Association Conference in 1991 with two scholars and two librarians. They discussed the prejudices against collecting popular culture materials that many librarians and archivists faced, along with other challenges and ideas for overcoming these obstacles. The chapter explores the journeys of Bill Blackbeard, Randall Scott, and Lucy Shelton Caswell and pioneers of the field. They focused on different and complementary aspects of collecting comics. In the end, each created an amazing legacy by amassing distinctive collections of comics and cartoon materials that are indispensable to the work of researchers.
