Superman, Captain America and Tomb Raider Lara Croft sit patiently on a shelf deep inside the Main Library, waiting for the next opportunity to save humanity.

The comic book characters are part of the more than 150,000 comic items housed in the library’s Special Collections room.

Evildoers beware.

The collection is recognized by scholars as the world’s primary resource for U.S. comic-art research.

Comic art bibliographer Randy Scott, caretaker of the comics for more than 10 years, never met a comic book he didn’t like.

“You don’t have favorites among your children,” he said, standing amid thousands of the collection’s artifacts.

Inside the dry, fluorescently-lit collection room, enormous mobile shelves slide open to reveal comic books, action figures, books and theses about comic art - all part of the collection.

Special motion sensors that automatically shut lights off after two minutes help keep the ink from fading.

The comic art collection makes up about one-third of the 500,000-piece special collection housed on 5 miles of shelving.

A darkened vault in the back of the collection houses rare comics dating as far back as 1566, some with goatskin bindings.

With that much material to keep track of and more donations arriving often, it can be difficult to stay on top of things.

But Scott said he doesn’t mind new arrivals.

“I never say ‘Oh no’ to a collection of comics,” he said.

Scott said during a good week, he can catalog about 30 new items. But you need to know more than the alphabet to organize these books, he said.

With more than 20,000 items from Europe, knowing several foreign languages is an important part of the job.

Scott can read French, Spanish and German with relative ease. He relies on others in the building to decode the rest.

But the day-to-day maintenance of the collection depends on a computer database and a staff of three very busy librarians.

“It’s exacting work,” he said. “We get headaches doing this.”

One item out of place can cause misery, Scott said.

“If someone has a bad day and puts something a foot from where it should be, it can be lost for 10 years,” he said.

But Scott said it would take a lot to make him stop caring for the comics.

“If there’s a flood and it all gets soaked and floats down the river and they decide insurance won’t pay for it, I’ll probably join the circus,” he said.

Scott gained experience organizing comics in 1971 as the first employee of the Curious Book Shop, 307 E. Grand River Ave.

“It certainly would have been difficult to do it without him,” store owner Ray Walsh said.

The MSU collection is second-to-none, Walsh said.

“They’ve got an excellent representation in the field, including a massive collection of foreign comics,” he said. “It’s certainly a collection to be proud of.”

Comics are the most-used part of the collection with about a dozen requests every day from comic hunters looking for information about artwork, Scott said.

Some requests come from MSU, others from as far away as Australia or Scotland.

The death of long-anonymous Donald Duck artist Carl Barks in August 2000 brought Klaus Piber across the Atlantic Ocean to study at MSU.

Piber, 25, flew from Graz, Austria, Friday to begin more than two months of research about the artist at MSU’s collection.

“It’s really the best place to do it,” the University of Graz art history student said. “There isn’t such a big comic collection in Europe.”

Collection items come mostly from private donations, but every now and then Scott makes a good find.

While walking through the woods near Onekema in 1974, Scott said he discovered a pile of firewood that appeared to have been there for a few years.

“In the pile I spied a copy of ‘The Lone Ranger’s Companion Tonto’ No. 23,” he said.

The copy, printed in 1956, is now part of the MSU collection.

“We still only have 15 of the total 33 issues,” Scott said. “I’ve looked in woodpiles all over northern Michigan since without finding one.”

Scott said persistence and willingness to stray from touristy areas are the trick to finding good comics.

“It can be similar to hunting morel mushrooms,” he said. “Once you’ve got the knack for it you just sort of know when you’re in the right kind of neighborhood.”

Scott’s white hair and beard also provide a slight advantage.

“People in the flea markets are friendlier when they think they’re dealing with Santa Claus,” he joked.

But not every item in the collection comes from woodpiles or flea markets - many are purchased from local stores.

David Comfort, manager of 21st Century Comics and Games, 515 E. Grand River Ave., said he’s heard about the comic collection, but has never seen it firsthand. Scott purchases some newer items in the collection from Comfort’s store.

“It is certainly a mythic place,” he said. “There’s not anything else like it in the country.”

Comfort said he’s looking forward to visiting the collection.

“I will be a kid in a candy store,” he said. “There’s going to be stuff in there which I’ve only read about.”

Ed Ronco can be reached at roncoedw@msu.edu.