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The 50 Things That Every Comics Collection Truly Needs

Meme time! Tom Spurgeon has written a list of The 50 Things That Every Comics Collection Truly Needs, and has invited readers to play along. Tom’s list follows, and I have made bold any items that are in my own comics collection.

1. Something From The ACME Novelty Library
   I usually wait for serialized works to get reprinted in full, but everything Chris Ware puts out is a genuine objet d’art.
2. A Complete Run Of Arcade
3. Any Number Of Mini-Comics
   I recently sorted through my overflowing box of them and got rid of the junk. I’m sure to bring back a truckload more from from SPX.
4. At Least One Pogo Book From The 1950s
   For the life of me, I can’t find it or remember the title, which has me worried, but I have one somewheres.
5. A Barnaby Collection
   Sadly, no!
6. Binky Brown and the Holy Virgin Mary
7. As Many Issues of RAW as You Can Place Your Hands On
8. A Little Stack of Archie Comics
   I have a few recent issues left over from some Reuben Award judging, but truthfully I should’ve left this one blank, as I’d much prefer some of the older, equally-as-bad-and-yet-still-much-better digests.
9. A Suite of Modern Literary Graphic Novels
   A suite, indeed.
10. Several Tintin Albums
    I almost didn’t even do this exercise because I’m too embarrassed to admit I don’t own any Tintin. Shameful, I know.
11. A Smattering Of Treasury Editions Or Similarly Oversized Books
    Plenty, including the complete Far Side, Don Martin, and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (which, if we’re going by size alone, should be all I need).
12. Several Significant Runs of Alternative Comic Book Series
    
13. A Few Early Comic Strip Collections To Your Taste
    Name your poison: Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, Popeye, Gasoline Alley, Little Orpahn Annie, Krazy Kat.
14. Several “Indy Comics” From Their Heyday
    Does a single copy of Ivan Brunetti’s Misery Loves Comedy #2 count as several?
15. At Least One Comic Book From When You First Started Reading Comic Books
    Lots of ridiculous Superman from the early 1980s, and a few
16. At Least One Comic That Failed to Finish The Way It Planned To
17. Some Osamu Tezuka
    No, but Buddha is high on my to-read list.
18. The Entire Run Of At Least One Manga Series
19. One Or Two 1970s Doonesbury Collections
    Sadly, just The Reagen Years from 1984. Close, though!
20. At Least One Saul Steinberg Hardcover
    I thought I did, but it’s one of those things I keep not buying when I see them.
21. One Run of A Comic Strip That You Yourself Have Clipped
    I did this when I was a kid, but never saved them.
22. A Selection of Comics That Interest You That You Can’t Explain To Anyone Else
    I suppose I’d have trouble explaining what I see in the handful of Family Circus paperbacks I own, or some leftover Deep Space Nine comics from my misspent youth, but if you have a decent enough collection, I find “not wanting to get rid of it” is reason enough to keep something. A friend often brings me back comics from overseas that have little intrinsic value apart from the sentiment of them being gifts and travel mementos: Stories from the Bhagawat from India, and Simbi and the Hunchback from Kenya.
23. At Least One Woodcut Novel
    I thought Art Spiegelman’s The Wild Party might’ve counted, but it appears to be scratchboard. Half points?
24. As Much Peanuts As You Can Stand
    Technically, I have far less than I can stand, but perhaps more than most people can stand—a dozen or so paperbacks, all of the Fantagraphics reprints, biographies of and interviews with Schulz, and a handful of oversized books round out the collection (44 titles tagged ‘peanuts’ in my LibraryThing profile, it would appear).
25. Maus
    And signed by Spiegelman.
26. A Significant Sample of R. Crumb’s Sketchbooks
    Ten of them.
27. The original edition of Sick, Sick, Sick.
28. The Smithsonian Collection Of Newspaper Comics
29. Several copies of MAD
    I have it delivered to my door!
30. A stack of Jack Kirby 1970s Comic Books
31. More than a few Stan Lee/Jack Kirby 1960s Marvel Comic Books
32. A You’re-Too-High-To-Tell Amount of Underground Comix
33. Some Calvin and Hobbes
    A complete collection of the softcovers and the mammoth triple-hardcover-slipcase complete collection.
34. Some Love and Rockets
35. The Marvel Benefit Issue Of Coober Skeber
36. A Few Comics Not In Your Native Tongue
37. A Nice Stack of Jack Chick Comics
38. A Stack of Comics You Can Hand To Anybody’s Kid
39. At Least A Few Alan Moore Comics
    Watchmen, natch, and LXG.
40. A Comic You Made Yourself
41. A Few Comics About Comics
    Soctt McCloud’s trilogy, and Seth’s Wimbledon Green.
42. A Run Of Yummy Fur
    I didn’t have this until earlier today, in fact. I was at the Beguiling, and there was a wrapped collection of the entire thing for $75. Sold!
43. Some Frank Miller Comics
    His Batman books, only.
44. Several Lee/Ditko/Romita Amazing Spider-Man Comic Books
45. A Few Great Comics Short Stories
    Plenty!
46. A Tijuana Bible
    I wish.
47. Some Weirdo
48. An Array Of Comics In Various Non-Superhero Genres
    You’d be hard pressed to find much superhero stuff in my collection.
49. An Editorial Cartoonist’s Collection or Two
    A few Canadain collections: Ting, Ben Wicks, Andy Donato, Roy Peterson. As well as some Gerald Scarfe and 4 or 5 of Daryl Cagle’s annual collections.
50. A Few Collections From New Yorker Cartoonists
    In addition to The Complete New Yorker, I have lots of Charles Addams, Roz Chast, Jack Ziegler, B. Kliban, George Booth, Sempé, Peter Arno, and a half-dozen or so more magazine-wide collections.

Some things not on Tom’s list that I think every collection should have?

I would be sad to have a collection that didn’t have at least one book from Ronald Searle, Lewis Trondheim, Edward Gorey, or William Steig. And though he mentions them with The New Yorker, both Sempé and Kliban deserve special mention, since their best work is arguably not from the magazine, and is some of cartooningdom’s best work period. Also, while The New Yorker may boast the most impressive pedigree of gag cartooning, other publications have just as worthy cartoon collections, including Playboy, National Lampoon, and Punch.

And as Chris mentions, some journal/diary comics are a must.

As for mini comics, some of the more notable minis and hand-stapled items in my collection are those that eventually found print with major publishers, like Kean Soo’s Jellaby minis and Craig Thompson’s Goodbye Chunky Rice photocopied preview.

I’d also recommend at least a half dozen or so books about comics and comics history. And whether you are an artist or not, a range of how-to-draw-cartoon books from various decades can often tell as much about the history of comics, and the evolution of the medium, as comics themselves.

And finally: Simon Bond’s 101 Uses for a Dead Cat.

For the curious, you can see my books I own tagged ‘cartoonart’ on LibraryThing.