The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, edited by Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams, was published in 1977; it has influenced several generations of comics creators (such as Chris Ware), publishers (such as Kim Thompson), critics (such as Jeet Heer) and fans [1]. An anthology of American newspaper strips that range in date from the late 19th century until the mid-1970s, it contains an astonishing breadth of comics (maintaining continuity when possible) in beautifully reproduced color and crisp black and white [2]. In addition to the usual Masters of American Comics suspects, it contains strips from virtual unknowns (such as Charles Fink's Slim Jim) and some famous cartoonists' lesser-known works, like Merely Margy by John Held, Jr. Blackbeard and Williams' accessible-yet-scholarly essays provide historical context and biographical information, while putting forth a thesis that the newspaper strips themselves prove: comics are an art form, worthy of critical investigation. For those who had only been exposed to domestic, gag-a-day strips fighting for space on increasingly cramped newspaper pages, the action-adventure serials, fantasy full-pagers, and licensed characters engaging in genuinely entertaining shenanigans were (and still are) a revelation: a revelation made possible by Blackbeard's archives.

According to Blackbeard, "The Smithsonian had no collection of comics whatever, that is to say, comic strips. I mean, they had some original cartoon art that various cartoonists had donated to them, but they had no functional form comic strips whatsoever, not a single page of Bringing Up Father, or a single page of Mutt and Jeff or a single page of Krazy Kat. That was just not in their area of interest.

"However, the Smithsonian did have […] the Smithsonian Press. And one of the officials, one of the individuals that worked with this press was named martin Williams. And he was a comics fan, and he'd heard about what I'd done with the Academy, so he thought, "Why don't we put out a book out through the Smithsonian Press?" So he contacted me, and we both picked comic strips for that, and lo and behold, there was a book called The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics.

"Of course, that led to a nationwide error, because quite suddenly the Smithsonian found that its phones were ringing off their bells with people who wanted to come and look at the Smithsonian collection of newspaper comics. Of course, there was no such thing. The only collection they had was the one that we had put together and photographed and published in the book. […] The only such collection was mine."

Blackbeard has worked on more than 200 books on comics since then: he continues to write and edit. He takes pride in the growing market for newspaper-strip reprints, one he very much helped create. He told me: "Ten or 15 years ago, you wouldn't have had that sort of sales success, but a new generation of kids developed an interest in the classic comics, and now you can probably sell most anything. Currently, we have the complete run of Terry and the Pirates and Krazy Kat and Popeye and other strips that are moving off the bookshelves about as fast as they can be put there. So that, of course, is very good news."

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