“Special Collections” signs act as guides through the cluster of shelves in the library’s basement. Once inside the Special Collections reading room, both the curious and the scholarly simply need to tell the present faculty member what they are looking for.
The staff member goes through another door that is forbidden for others to enter, sifting through shelves that hold U.S. comic books, newspaper comic strips, about 45,000 foreign comics and 5,000 different books and periodicals about comics. Once the requested item is retrieved, they are welcome to use it in the reading room, but they can’t take it with them.
Head of Special Collections Peter Berg said MSU students and scholars from around the world come to East Lansing to experience the collection.
“It’s a really big cultural draw,” supply chain management junior Junyi Chen said. “I didn’t really know the extent of the collection. It should be put out there more.”
From powerful superheroes to graphic autobiographies, the comic book world has only continued to grow, and MSU’s campus has always served as a welcoming home for its paneled pages.
“We have the largest public collection of comics in the entire world, and people don’t even know it’s there,” Comics and Visual Narrative professor Ryan Claytor said.
A comic book campus
MSU’s connection with comics has stretched past the library and into the classrooms. Claytor has been teaching the Comics and Visual Narrative course to students for five years. With nine published autobiographical comics of his own under his belt, he is able to take students into the world of a graphic novelist.
The comics studio course gives students a chance to bring their own imagination to life by sharpening their skills in lettering, inking, panelizations, pacing, characterization and scripting.
Students are required to create four short story comics before the end of the semester. Those stories are all compiled into full-length comic books.
The authors even get a taste of fame once they have created their finished product by having a signing for their comics.
Claytor said he usually caps the course at 15 students.
His class is not the only comic book draw around campus - Claytor said there currently is speculation of adding a Comics minor to MSU.
“Comics is a medium, just like paintings, and in that medium you can do anything you want,” Claytor said. “You can write fantasy, humor, horror and really anything that you could in book form.”
Students also have been taking their own strides toward contributing to the comic book culture at MSU.
Chen, the vice president of the newly-formed Doujin Manga Club, said he and club president Deon Howard started the club on a whim. The group helps people create manga, or Japanese comics, and develop their professional skills.
Howard, a marketing junior, said the club also helps point members in the direction of internships within the manga and comic book industries. The club meets every Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in Wells Hall.
“It’s expressive in a different way,” Chen said. “It’s very accessible to people who even just like to draw or doodle. I’ve been reading comics and manga most of my life - they have a better appeal to a wider audience than just reading books.”
MSU Comics Forum
For the seventh year in a row, comic book enthusiasts, scholars and artists all flocked to East Lansing for the MSU Comics Forum.
“There’s nothing like it in the state,” said Claytor, the director of the forum.
The forum included the Asian Comics Collection: MSU Library Holdings from 13 Countries. Later in the week, attendees, artists and scholars also had an opportunity to see documentary screenings and participate in panel discussions.
Last Friday evening featured two prominent names in the industry - 30-year comic book veteran Stan Sakai and Eisner Award-winning graphic novelist Nate Powell. The award, Claytor said, is the Oscar of the comic book industry.
Powell paid a visit to Hollow Mountain Comics for a signing and Sakai gave the forum’s keynote address in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities Theatre.
Howard, who attended the forum with his club, said it was eye-opening to see a legend like Sakai as a regular person.
“For me personally, it was a very enlightening experience,” he said. “I learned his process with creating his work is the same as mine, and seeing a professional doing this the same way as I do helps me know the possibilities with my work.”
Snyder-Phillips Hall was packed with artists and fans alike on Feb. 21 for the Artist Alley. About 36 comic book artists were present to sign their books and chat with their admiring fans, including Powell, Sakai, “Mouse Guard” artist David Petersen and “Cursed Pirate Girl” artist Jeremy Bastian.
“The forum started out really modest with maybe three or five artists attending,” Claytor said. “Now we’re able to get three dozen. I’m really proud of where we’ve taken it.”
A day in an illustrator’s life
All it takes is a pen, paper and copy machine to turn the images inside one’s head into reality.
Powell has harbored a passion for comic books since he was three years old. But it wasn’t until the summer between his sixth and seventh grade year in middle school that the self-described “kid who could always draw well” found himself on the path to becoming a comic book artist.
The spark of one idea prompted Powell and his best friend to devote their weekends to drawing out a storyline.
When it was finished, their work found its way to the shelves of local comic book shops.
Powell is still drawing today, but now he makes a living off of his work. A former East Lansing resident, Powell makes trips to the city almost every year for the Comics Forum, where he shares his experiences as a successful comic artist.
“You’re putting in a lot of time, energy and creativity into something lasting that extends beyond your own brain,” he said. “It’s extremely satisfying.”
Once a story idea is born, Powell works through the basic elements of the story, such as its length, and he breaks down the basics with a pencil in a sketchbook.
At that point, his visions are only “thumbnails” that stand three inches tall.
From there he moves on to the penciling stage, a version of the story that is about one and a half times as large as the final product will be. These drawings are much looser while Powell fixes any mistakes in flow from the original thumbnail drawings.
Moving on to character dialogue is a whole new ball game. He starts out with a typical waterproof black pen for captions and lettering before he brings out India ink for the pictures’ lines.
Finally, Powell uses gentle watercolor brush strokes to bring everything together.
He said he usually goes through five to six drafts of the books by the time he scans the final copy. The entire process can take years, and Powell said a general rule of thumb for graphic novelists is to draw at least a page every day. To make a living, artists need to produce 250 pages a year, and he said only five percent of artists do make a full-time living with the trade.
Powell himself has been doing it for five years and has illustrated for seven novels, including Eisner Award-winner “Swallow Me Whole” and his latest release, book one of the graphic autobiographical trilogy “March.”
“It is a part of following your dreams - it’s like walking a tightrope,” he said. “You can make it to the other side, but it’s a balancing act.”
A growing industry
Comic books are not centered simply around the actual book anymore. Superheroes today are presented to fans in various forms based off the pages where they got their start.
Hollow Mountain Comics co-owner Gabriel Cooper said comics have reached a level of popularity that they haven’t been at since their “golden age” during the ‘50s and ‘60s.
“Film industries pick these stories up, and people experience them worldwide,” he said.
Ray Walsh, owner of Curious Book Shop on Grand River Avenue, has sold comic books since he started selling books in 1969. He said that movies give people a certain mental image of what these heroes are supposed to be like, which was not always the case.
He said prices have risen significantly higher since he first started selling comic books, and noted the artwork has a much more professional appearance due to vivid colors and futuristic technology.
New technology, including self-publishing companies, have made the industry more accessible as a whole to both producers and consumers of comic books.
“Nowadays, anyone can publish comics, and they do frequently,” Walsh said. “The hard part is distribution and producing high quality, enjoyable material.”
On the consumer end, Cooper said social media helps him predict which books will end up flying off the shelves of his store. He said simply logging onto his Facebook page and seeing what his friends are talking about, including the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man 2 or Batman vs. Superman movies, shows him what people will be looking for when they walk through Hollow Mountain’s doors.
All types of members of the comics community have walked down the steps to Hollow Mountain Comics, from published graphic novelists to enthusiasts to students who aspire to one day turn the images inside their heads into a tangible creation.
“Comics are very important to this community,” Cooper said. “There’s a level of storytelling in comics that can’t happen with any other vehicle. They’re at this weird place between literature and cin ema - you’re essentially holding a movie in your hands. There’s something magical about getting those new books in every Wednesday.”
