One of the perennial challenges in collecting comics is: how do you organize them? There are any number of methods, and I've heard librarians and bookstore owners both complain of inconsistencies in how comics get sorted. I've always found it a bit odd to go into a bookstore, look through their graphic novel/manga section, then hike to another section of the store to look up the comic strip collections, which are frequently near if not within the the humor section. Even the adventure strips like Dick Tracy or Terry & the Pirates. Or sometimes they'll all be over by puzzles and games. Never quite made sense to me.

I suppose it ultimately boils down to what makes the most sense to the individual. Everybody's brain is wired a little differently, and they have different priorities. So maybe it's easier for you to keep all your Phantom stories together, and someone else might keep all their Mort Walker stories together, and someone else might just have all their books organized chronologically.

For me, I have my personal collection split up into five sections:

1. Floppies/Pamphlets
2. Graphic Novels/TPBs
3. Manga
4. Prose Books about Comics
5. Comic Strip Collections

The floppies, graphic novels, and manga are then just in alphabetical order by title. The books about comics are alphabetical by author. And then there's my comic strip collections.

I wrestled with this one for a while. I didn't want to use the author names for the same reason I don't use them in organizing floppies: over long stretches, the creators on any given title can change. Chronologically doesn't make sense either since there'd be lots of overlap, regardless of whether you used the original publication date or the reprint publication date. Title is a bit awkward, too, since many collections don't actually use the proper name of the strip in the title.

I ultimately decided on using the title of the strip. Those have been known to change, but not all that frequently and certainly not within the confines of my current collection. The problem that does arise, though, are collections of political cartoons. These are generally unnamed, and only ever referred to as "that political cartoon by..." So I guess they get filed under the author's name? I'm not terribly keen on that because now my bookshelf reads...

• Charles Addams
• Barnaby
• Glen Baxter
• Big Nate
• Bizarro
• Bloom County
• Calvin & Hobbes
• Ron Cobb
...and so on...

It works, but it's kind of clunky. Especially since everything else in my library is organized a lot more simply.

So my question today is: how do you organize your comic strip collections? What makes sense and/or works for you?

Tom Feelings is probably best known as a children's book illustrator. He was the first Black recipient of the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1972 for Moja Means One, and he won the award again in 1974 for Jambo Means Hello. He's also won awards for some of his other books, like To Be a Slave and The Middle Passage.

Less well-known, though, is that he has some solid comic credentials as well. In fact, one of his first works after leaving the Air Force was a weekly comic strip called Tommy Traveler in The World of Black History, debuting in 1958. The story is that the title character is a boy who's already read all of the books on Black history in his local library, and the librarian directs him to Dr. Gray, who has a more substantial private collection. Tommy, in perusing the books, magazines, and newspaper clippings in Gray's collection, imagines himself back in time meeting the people and experiencing the events he's reading about: Pheoebe Fraunces, Frederick Douglass, Crispus Attucks, Aesop, Joe Louis, and Emmett Till! The series only ran for a year in New York Age but it was collected in book form and colored in 1991.

The individual stories are relatively short -- they were formatted for a weekly newspaper strip, after all -- so they didn't get into too much detail, but they do provide some useful overviews for histories that are frequently glossed over, or altogether ignored. I'm certainly no expert, but this is the only place I've seen biographies of Fraunces or Till in comic form!

Interestingly, about a decade after these came out, Feelings met Bertram Fitzgerald. It seems a little unclear if this meeting was an inspiration for Fitzgerald, or Fitzgerald sought Feelings out after already having the idea, but soon afterwards, Fitzgerald began publishing his Golden Legacy comic book series. He even hired Feelings to do the art for the Harriet Tubman and Crispus Attucks stories!

John Lewis credits the 1958 Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story comic as having a profound effect on him, that helped direct him into the Civil Rights movement, Congress, and eventually the March books. That Montgomery Story came out the same year as Tommy Traveler, I think, is quite interesting and speaks to how the Black community was using comics in both an educational and community-building manner. There's probably a lot to be said about this topic and I, for one, would be interested to find out what other Black comics were promoting a sense of cultural identity like this. Tommy Traveler, at least, were collected in 1991 as I said, and it's definitely worth trying to track down a copy.

(Special shout-out to Qiana Whitted who alerted me to Tommy Traveler in the first place and that it had been collected in book form!)

• Vermont, the only state that regularly appoints a cartoonist laureate, is naming Alison Bechdel as their third cartoonist laureate.
  
• For interested artist-types, Jonathan Case built a Sable-tipped brush pen that runs any ink, and provides instructions on how you can do the same.
  

No, this is not another one of those "what kind of hat does Jughead wear anyway" posts. It seems like everybody's done one of those at one time or another. Yes, it was originally a fedora turned inside out and the brim chopped up, which was a thing back in the first half of the 20th century. You know all that, right? This was even explained in Jughead and Friends Digest #25 from 2008.

No, what I'm talking about is where Jughead got his actual hat from and why it makes sense that he should still wear it in 2017.

The origin goes back to Archie’s Pal Jughead #8 circa 1951. Like many children of 1930s (Jughead debuted as a teenager in 1941, meaning he originally would've been a child throughout much of the prior decade) he wore a button beany as was the fashion. But in the 1951 story, he's convinced that he should grow up and starts sporting an unmolested fedora.

It's at that point that his friend Archie starts casually playing with a loaded gun, which he accidentally fires at Jughead! The bullet nearly hits Jughead, going through the brim of his new hat. At which point, Jughead declares that the incident "scared me out of five years' growth" and made him a kid again. He promptly starts cutting away the fedora's now-bullet-holed brim to make himself another felt crown.

Various stories over the years have shown Jughead's hat to be a source of luck/power. It's become something of a totem in many respects. But what I find striking is that the notion dates back to 1951, and provides a legitimate rationale for why Jughead might have come to see it as such. Given that context, it make sense that he'd want to hang on to the item that (sort of) saved his life.

But the brilliant part, the really brilliant part, of that origin story is that it's completely contemporary even a half century later! Gun violence is still totally a thing, and most gunshot wounds are from accidents exactly like this! They've updated the characters in both the comics and the television show, but this piece still fits in completely seamlessly! Geez, think of that story in the context of Riverdale -- the emotional angst Jughead could go through in reconciling things with Archie could last weeks, or even months, as a subplot! The folks behind the show want to make things edgier? Do this story, and you've got a poignant, edgy story that also serves up some really old school fan service! How can you lose with that?

See, this is why knowing your comics history can benefit your "all new" "modern" take on things!

This weekend, there was something of broad Twitter discussion about how much creators should get paid. How publishers should paid fair rates for creators' (mostly artists') work, that kind of thing. Which is a fine discussion to have, but without some numbers, it's a little too theoretical to be of much value. I mean, sure, everybody thinks artists should get paid a fair rate... but what's "fair"?

The problem with that is that we live in a culture that has made concrete discussions of finances extremely taboo. Rian Sygh stepped up to the plate this weekend, though, and shared some of his financial situation...

Thanks, Rian, for sharing those details.

This is why that earlier claim that crazy/evil administrations can lead to great art is bullshit -- this is what Rian was able to do under about-as-good-as-it's-ever-been conditions. That note about having to work retail if not for his partner? That means not having time to make comics. Yes, there are absolutely good, talented, creative people making a good living off their art. But there are plenty more good, talented, creative people who are only able to get by with additional help from other sources. Which is why it's important to, when possible, patronize the ones you want to succeed however you're able.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: On Business: Multi-Purpose Con Marketing Idea
http://ift.tt/2mHu2rM

Kleefeld on Comics: On History: Kirby's Pencil
http://ift.tt/2nZU8qL

Kleefeld on Comics: Weekly Comics Links
http://ift.tt/2mPR67z

FreakSugar: Webcomics Wednesday: “News to Me!”
http://ift.tt/2msFV9T

Kleefeld on Comics: On -isms: Steamboat
http://ift.tt/2nrdkRf

I was never an especially big fan of the original Captain Marvel. Nothing wrong with the character, but the limited exposure I had to him in my childhood did little to capture my interest. As an adult, though, I'd periodically run across stories of someone with very fond memories of Captain Marvel, and I kept thinking, "I don't get it." I eventually picked up a couple of the Shazam Archives to try to figure out what the big deal was.

Which is a preface/explanation as to why, until a few weeks ago, I had no clue that some of the stories featured a character by the name of Steamboat. Cap's Wikipedia page makes no mention of him at all; I only just read about him in Brian Cremins' recent Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia. (I'll have a full review of the book on another site later.) Given that he first appeared in 1942, it should come as no surprise that a Black character like Steamboat was saddled with all sorts of offensive stereotypes, his Blackface-style appearance being the most immediately obvious.

What I found interesting, though, in reading Cremins' examination of the character was that he calls out both why the character was introduced and why he was later removed from the book. He quotes creator C.C.Beck from an interview from Hogan's Alley: "Steamboat was created to capture the affection of [N]egro readers... [Steamboat] was always a cartoon character, not intended to be realistic at all... he was taken seriously by some, sadly enough."

The intention, it would seem, was one of inclusion. As if to say, "Look, we're not racists; we have a Black character." Of course, the actual depiction of Steamboat was incredibly racist and, to no surprise, some people took offense to it. So much so, in fact, that a group of junior high school students went to editor Will Lieberson to complain. Lieberson noted that a lot of their characters were portrayed in all sorts of ways for the sake of humor, but these kids smartly pointed out that, as the sole Black character in the book, Steamboat wound up representing all Black people. "This is not the Negro race," they said, "but your one-and-a-half million readers will think so." They went on to explain that it wasn't just Steamboat that was a problem, but how race was portrayed in comics would have an impact on how people (especially impressionable kids) thought about race. It was fine to try to attract Black readers with a Black character, but making a mockery of the character would suggest to white readers that that treatment was acceptable.

They made a convincing argument, and Steamboat was dropped in 1945 with no explanation. Although no new Black characters were introduced; apparently, none of the creative team felt comfortable wading into those waters again.

What's noteworthy are some of the reflections from years later. In the quote above, Beck seems to have not really gotten the point. He seems to think that he was just doing something funny, and someone took it as a serious commentary. Writer Otto Binder reflected, "I was all in favor, actually, of anti-discrimination so [dropping Steamboat] didn't bother me, except that we did sigh once in a while because it was fun to depict such dialect groups. We never meant to degrade them, merely play them for humor."

We never meant to degrade them, merely play them for humor.

One of the keys to humor (in general) is to never punch down. You can make fun of those above you, or at your level, but making fun of someone in a lower station than you, someone who has less power than you, is inherently degrading. You're mocking what you have and they lack, and they don't have the power or ability to even defend themselves.

What Binder and Beck never seemed to realize was that Blacks have never been in a position of power and authority in the United States. They were considered the least of all races, and were (unfortunately) treated accordingly. Especially in the 1940s -- Brown v Board of Education was still a decade away, and the Civil Rights Act another decade-plus after that. Jim Crow laws were still very much on the books, and Black people were simply not welcome in large swaths of the country. How can you not see mocking a group who's been forced into that position as punching down?

That seems somewhat obvious in hindsight, but it's sadly dreadfully difficult for some people to see that kind of disconnect in the moment. People have an uncanny ability to hold blatantly oppositional beliefs simultaneously, and can be blind to the discordance even if it's pointed out to them. And I don't point all this out to besmirch Binder and Beck; I'm merely using them as an example of how good intentions can still be damaging and how simply talking to some people in the position/role you're writing about will help to shed a better light on how your character might be received.