Billy Ireland Cartoon Library
2.5 million comic strips & more!
Ohio State University (Columbus, OH) houses the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum — the world’s largest collection of materials related to cartoons and comics, including original art, books, magazines, journals, comic books, archival materials, newspaper comic strip pages and clippings.1
Billy Ireland was a Columbus celebrity during his lifetime who enjoyed a national reputation for his cartoons. 2
The collection includes 300,000 original cartoons; 45,000 books; 67,000 serials and comic books; 6,300 boxes of archival materials; and 2.5 million comic strip clippings.
Included is the Walt Kelly Collection.3
Mort Walker’s National Cartoon Museum
Many items in the collection were acquired in the summer of 2008 from the National Cartoon Museum (Boca Raton, FL) which was founded by Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker. Walker had collected cartoon art since the 1940s, and in 1974, with a contribution of $50,000 from the Hearst Foundation, he opened his museum in Stamford, Connecticut. Later, the museum occupied Ward's Castle, a large, dilapidated house in Port Chester, New York. In 1991 the city of Boca Raton, Florida invited Walker to relocate there.
However, the museum did not attract enough donations and two corporate sponsors went bankrupt. In 1998, the Hearst Foundation again stepped in, giving the museum $1 million. Nonetheless, to pay off some of the debts (including outstanding mortgage payments), Walker auctioned off a Mickey Mouse drawing in 2001 for $700,000. It was not enough, however; the museum was forced to close in 2002, and the collection was put into storage. Walker finally accepted an offer to merge his collection with that of Ohio State University in 2008. 4
Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum . Ohio State University.
Caswell, Lucy Shelton, Billy Ireland, and Frank Pauer. Billy Ireland. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Libraries, 2007.
Mary Pilon (July 16, 2008). "Beetle Bailey's Long March: Classic Cartoons Search for a Home". The Wall Street Journal.
Fascinating. I spent quite a bit of time in Columbus 2003-2006 and never knew this. Had I realized it was available, I would have spent less time in bars and more on campus.
This is an outstanding collection. I visited there once briefly, to see an exhibit. I would love to dip into the Walt Kelly collection. I have been a Pogo fan from my earliest days. My father used to read me "Uncle Pogo So-So Stories" and other Pogo books when I was 5 or so. Yes, that explains a lot.