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A curated $6 million shopping spree, part 3 – Edward Gorey

In which I continue my $6M Comics Shopping Spree

As you may recall, Action Comics #1 (DC, 1938) sold recently for $6M, breaking all previous records for a comic book sold at auction. The sale got me playing a fun “What if?” game in my head, like you do when you hear about big lottery winners. We all do that, right? You can grab a reasonable facsimile and enjoy this comic at home, and come along with me as I “spend” $6 million on comic art. 

Action Comics Number 1, sold for $6 million

Action Comics Number 1, sold for $6 million, image courtesy Heritage Auctions

So, let’s say we’ve hit upon a Brewster’s Millions scenario where we must spend the $6M, and it must be spent on original comic art. Not $1M in comic art and $5M on a really nice house — all $6M on comic art. I’ll throw in a Blu-Ray of the excellent Richard Prior/ John Candy movie.

I will buy art I like, not things I only see as “an investment,” and talk about my selections. Art I want to hang on my walls and live with and enjoy. After spending $6M on original art, conservation funding, gallery space, and state-of-the-art storage will be added as a reward, so I don’t have to worry about it as I’m splashing out for big-ticket items and won’t let my museum curator brain get too distracted about planning and worrying about caring for it all longterm. I’ve worked in museums for over twenty years, so I can’t help but think about these things.

The Rules:

  • The budget must be respected — I will only spend $6M and must spend all $6M.
  • In the interest of transparency, I will only shop publicly. Gotta show those receipts. No bidding up the next cool thing to $6M and be done. No deals with a wink and a nod to pay $6M for something not worth anywhere near that and split the difference on the back end. Let’s keep this as above board as high-end art buying can be. [cough] (**My citation of a sale somewhere *is not* an endorsement to shop there for real.**)
  • And let’s make the prices recent. No buying Jack Kirby art from a fanzine auction in 1972 and owning every piece by Jack Kirby to cross into private hands. So, let’s say anything purchased must be from any 2020 or more recent public sale. Also, no buying a whole comic shop for $6M.
  • And lastly, as curator of the Schulz Museum, it would be a conflict of interest for me to buy any Peanuts art, so there will be no Charles M. Schulz art on this list, though it’d be a dream come true to own anything by him. This adds a lot more wiggle room in my budget, because Schulz’s art is not cheap! 

Did I forget anything? Write me and let me. Ok, let’s go!

Edward Gorey

As we observe the 100th anniversary of the birth of Edward Gorey this year, I looked at my family calendar hanging in the kitchen, which is Edward Gorey themed, and I realized I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of his original art in person. I’ve seen so much of his work as book covers for all kinds of writers, as posters, and of course his own wonderful books, but not the original art. (The month of March on our calendar is the page from The Gashleycrumb Tinies, where “N is for Neville who died of ennui,” in case you were curious.) 

Granted, Edward Gorey is not a “comic artist” in the strictest sense, but his illustrations have influenced so many who have come since, and are so singular, and deeply funny, I cannot skip having him in my dream collection. And, as collecting is a deeply personal endeavor, I’m including him. So, into the auction rooms we go, paddle in hand. 

$7,500, sold October 2023

Apparently, there is not a ton of Gorey’s art in private hands. I know he was prolific, so I imagined there would be a lot of great work to choose from. Also, I am shocked at the low prices. Gorey is widely admired, and his work rarely comes to auctions. Even then, selling for very modest amounts is an eye-opener. Maybe because he is sold as “fine art” and not “comic art”? I sense that the comic art crowd would pay more for his art. I selected this piece because it makes me think of the swooning lady at the beginning of the PBS Mystery! series opening, which he also illustrated. I love that opening. 

$10,000, sold June 2021

I love boilerplate return letters from authors to fans. I’ve seen some wonderful ones over the years, and would have sworn I had a blog post about some of the postcard versions that have come to light over the years, but I can’t find it. So, I’ll put that on my idea list for another time. Gorey’s delightful return boilerplate reply is perfect. Visually clever and spilling over with details that fans would delight in, and a place for his signature. I’ve never seen one of the replies — were these made? Did he send them? 

$27,500, sold December 2021

The auction sales copy for this lot alone would have sold me on buying this piece without images of Gorey’s delicately drawn horrors and beasties. 

$20,000, sold December 2021

My very favorite Gorey project might have to be the opening for Mystery! on WGBH/ PBS. This is his drawing for a t-shirt they did for the show. According to the handwritten instructions at the bottom right, the logo goes in the rectangle. A few of these old t-shirts are available on the collector market and command premiums themselves. 

$21,250, sold December 2021

I love this piece. I love the linework, the suggestion of alternate dimensions/ realities around us all the time. That feeling you get when you wonder if you could look in a reflection and catch something unexpected. That’s part of why I love Gorey’s work. 

$10,000, sold December 2022

They’ve fallen in love, but if you squint from across the room, it also makes an evil face. Perfect for when I’ve not had my first cup of coffee and I’m not wearing my glasses yet in the morning. [chef’s kiss]

$21,250, sold December 2022

I’ve always liked a little bit of spooky fun around Christmas. It’s a moody, ghosty time of year when it feels like the barriers between here and there, and where and nowhere grow thin. Gorey’s art falls into this liminal time and space for me, and having a little pretty, bright-colored paper featuring a plant that people claim is deadly but is actually simply lovely to look at, seems about perfect. 

$4,873,300 – $117,500 = $4,755,800 remains to spend.

Did you miss Part 1 of this series? Go back here for my first post and watch me spend nearly $1 million on the art of Bill Watterson! Or maybe you’d like Part 2, where I threw a pile of money at the work of Winsor McCay!  This post contains affiliate links.

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About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

A curated $6 million shopping spree, part 2 – Winsor McCay

In which I continue my $6M Comics Shopping Spree

As you may recall, Action Comics #1 (DC, 1938) sold recently for $6M, breaking all previous records for a comic book sold at auction. The sale got me thinking, playing a fun “What if?” game in my head, like you do when you hear about big lottery winners. We all do that, right?

Action Comics Number 1, sold for $6 million
Action Comics Number 1, sold for $6 million, image courtesy Heritage Auctions

So, let’s say we’ve hit some kind of Brewster’s Millions scenario where we must spend the $6M, and it must be spent on original comic art. Not $1M in comic art and $5M on a really nice house and estate for it all — all $6M of it on comic art.

I will buy stuff I like, not things as “an investment,” and talk about my selections. Art I want to hang on my walls and live with and enjoy. After spending $6M on original art, conservation funding, gallery space, and state-of-the-art storage will be added as a reward, so I don’t have to worry about it as I’m splashing out for big-ticket items and won’t let my museum curator brain get too distracted about planning and worrying about caring for it all longterm. I’ve worked in museums for over twenty years, so I can’t help but think about these things.

Some parameters:

  • The budget must be respected — I will only spend $6M and get as close as possible to spending all $6M.
  • In the interest of transparency, I will only shop publicly. Gotta show those receipts. No bidding up the next cool thing to $6M and be done. No deals with a wink and a nod to pay $6M for something not worth anywhere near that and split the difference on the back end. Let’s keep this as above board as high-end art buying can be. [cough] (My citation of a sale somewhere *is not* an endorsement to shop there for real.)
  • And let’s make the prices recent. No buying Jack Kirby art from a fanzine auction in 1972 and owning every piece by Jack Kirby to cross into private hands. So, let’s say anything purchased must be from any 2020 or more recent public sale. Also, no buying a whole comic shop for $6M.
  • And lastly, as curator of the Schulz Museum, it’d be a conflict of interest for me to buy any Peanuts art, so there will be no Charles M. Schulz art on this list, though it’d be a dream come true to own anything by him.

Did I forget anything? Write me and let me. Ok, let’s go!

Winsor McCay

A pioneer of comic strip art, animation, and drawings that will break your brain and make you feel too unworthy to pick up a pencil. However, he was a pioneer of the comic strip form and is widely recognized for his artistic ability, even among art lovers who will turn up their noses at comics. You can read up on him on Wikipedia if you don’t know who he is. Let’s get into some art!

$168,000, sold March 2020

Incredible action in this Little Nemo Sunday page, which is what I always love to see in Nemo strips. The action and the fantasy are all incredible. Doonsbury cartoonist, Garry Trudeau owned this one for an interesting bit of trivia to go along with it as it hangs in my dream collection. It is also one of only a few Winsor McCay Sunday pages sold since 2020. I like this one best because it captures the action I love seeing in his work. I’m also a fan of his draftsmanship, like anyone, but his action is funny and fun to look at, except for the racist bits that he sometimes included, which are gross and a bummer. The price, granted, is more than I have spent on a house in my life, but still — worth it.  With $6M to spend, I’m not bargain-hunting!

$75,000 in October 2022

Again, beautifully drawn — this time with Santa and reindeer and crowds of people we should think of as we head into the holiday season. We see some of McCay’s thinking as an editorial cartoonist. I can really get behind this one. It’d be a treat to hang it on December 23rd and take it down on December 26th like all good Holiday decor.

$6,500 in June 2024 at Swann Galleries

This looks like a sketch, not the finished drawing, which is super impressive on its own. Swann Galleries says it was for one of McCay’s editorial cartoons. Some catastrophic flood has hit Manhattan — another calamity from the mind of Winsor McCay. Nightmares that make you fall out of bed, a sneeze to match a typhoon, and here, with buildings turned topsy-turvy. Again, it is a crazy, fantastic image and frankly, a bargain at the price.

$20,000 in June 2022 at Artcurial

I adore this one. I always love a comic strip about visiting museums. I’ve often thought that would be a fun collection theme — Museums In Comics. I love how McCay outlined the dinosaur and filled in the bones. What it lacks in anatomical correctness, it more than makes up for in skeletal and fossil vibes. Also, there is a hint to his future Gertie the Dinosaur animation! The drawing also *feels* like a fragile clattering problem waiting for the tiniest excuse to fly to bits, which it admirably does in the fifth panel. This is also a seemingly rare strip where a Winsor McCay hero is not being lectured or beaten for their misdeed. 

$5,200 in September 2024 from ComicLink Auctions

Speaking of McCay’s work as a pioneer animator, it’d be cool to have a Gertie piece, too, while we’re looking. Several of these have come up for sale in the past couple of years, but I like this pose best for some reason.

$5,148,000 – $274,700 = $4,873,300 remains to spend.

Did you miss Part 1 of this series? Go back here for my first post and watch me spend nearly $1 million on the art of Bill Watterson!

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

Bookshop Memories – Heddrich’s, Williston, North Dakota

Heddrich's Basement Bookstore, where books are sold by the pound. The more you buy, the cheaper it gets.

Hedderich’s – Williston, ND

In 2010, I moved away from a metro filled with bookstores to a small town in northeast Montana. Oklahoma City, though not a mecca of bibliophiles, at least had some nice bookshops and was close enough to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area to go see great authors if they stopped there. Big-name authors almost never came to Oklahoma City, with Dallas being closer. Authors that did visit usually had some connection drawing them there, like they were originally from Oklahoma or had family there. 

Heddrich's Book Cavern - Williston, ND
Heddrich’s Basement Bookstore, Williston, ND. January 2011. Photo by Benjamin L. Clark

 There was no bookstore in this small town in Montana of about five thousand souls, even though it is the biggest town around for nearly a hundred miles in any direction. There had been one little bookstore, but it closed. The county library, located there, had a small shelf of books for sale for dimes and quarters — cast-offs from the donation bin. Thank God for the library. Also, the museum where I worked had a gift shop that sold books by local authors and local history, which was nice but did not go far in feeding a bibliophile’s soul. But, just a short drive away, across the North Dakota state line, was a town large enough to have a movie theater: Williston. There were also bookstores in Williston. 

Heddrich's Book Cavern
Heddrich’s Basement Bookstore, Williston, ND. January 2011. Photo by Benjamin L. Clark

Hedderich’s was not a bookstore, but they had enough old books for sale to be a point of discussion when used books came up in conversation. At one time, the building for Hedderich’s was a large downtown department store building, from the heyday of downtown retail long before online shopping or even shopping malls. By the time I lived in the area, the once proud, huge store had been converted to a sort of antique mall, army surplus, model train store. And in the cavernous basement of this enormous place was books. Nothing but old books, almost entirely unsorted and sold by the pound. There were thousands and thousands of old books down there. I called it a book mine.

The book prices were quite reasonable circa 2010. 📸 Benjamin L. Clark, the author.

What is a book mine? I don’t think I originated the phrase, but I don’t know if anyone has ever endeavored to define one. I’ve seen a few book mines, but I see them less often now. I find they are rarely advertised and don’t have websites beyond maybe a placeholder with hours — typically not updated since 2001. Book mines can have weird, irregular hours. A book mine is also usually huge. Cheap real estate helps, so they are usually in huge, rundown, leaky buildings in a part of town that’s seen better days. 

In the past, I’ve called author Larry McMurtry’s Booked Up in Archer City, Texas, a book mine. It had almost no web presence and a huge inventory. One of the biggest book stores I’ve ever seen. You could easily spend days, not just hours, looking. Perhaps book mines tend to be in out-of-the-way places. Or, maybe I’m the one in out-of-the-way places. It seems even the ones in major cities are in parts of the city that meet these descriptions, too.

Hand drawn sign for the Basement Bookstore. An open book says Sold 99c a pound, novels, magazines, paperbacks...

To be clear, Hedderich’s was *not* the Northern Plains version of Booked Up. The comparison disintegrates quickly when looking at almost any part of it. McMurtry’s store had top-quality stock, immaculate buildings, and shelving, and all of the books were knowledgeably sorted, organized, and priced. Even when I was actively selling online, I had a hard time finding books to resell to make up for the cost of my trip to Archer City the prices were so spot on. I was not a super-talented book scout, but I could usually cover the cost of books I wanted to keep, gas, and food when I went anywhere to buy old books. Sometimes, I could turn enough profit to feel good about doing it.  

By the way, that’s .99 cents per 5 lbs, not $5,99 per pound. And, Flea Market Organs. Photo by Benjamin L. Clark

Hedderich’s was the opposite of Booked Up. There were easily tens of thousands of books. But, the store’s basement, which was filled with books, was dirty. Only most of the fluorescent tube lights worked. Some flickered constantly. I could hear something dripping somewhere. Another version of the sign above announced these prices are NEW. The sign was also dated 1992. The books were barely sorted. Books seemed to be mainly from the 1940s-1980s, which was strange. Nothing very old. Nothing more recent. If you’re a Soviet/ Anti-Communist collector, this was the place for you. Do you collect self-help, pseudo-religion, or pseudo-health? Nurse-themed romance novels? This place would have scores for you. There were more Reader’s Digest Condensed Books than I’ve ever seen in one place. If you have that kind of client, these can be worth selling to realtors and interior designer types by the yard, but there was not much worth bothering with for resale online. 

To a collector, there was a lot of crap. But at these prices, who wouldn’t be tempted to at least dig a little? I found a gorgeous 1930s booklet from Zion National Park … but someone had cut a few of the photos out of it, but found another for Glacier National Park from the 1920s, which was pristine. There was a pile of old phone books, which helped fill gaps in the county archive, which was exciting for historical research purposes, but that’s a different kind of thrill. It was that kind of place. All was not lost, however. I did find a few books for myself, but mostly roamed and tried to figure out where everything was, my brain trying to impose order or find the order that led someone to bring all the books there. 

A couple dozen Ellery Queen Magazine spines. I regret not saving all of these.

Writing this essay several years after my last visit, I looked online to see if it was still open. The Hedderich’s building burned in 2017. Photos from local news sources show the multi-story building’s roof collapsed. Days later, the wreckage caught fire again, and eventually, all of whatever remained collapsed into the basement. Maybe the total loss of those tens of thousands of books won’t be missed, but the loss of the experience of searching, mining, and discovering will be something any book lover would love to find in a dream.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

Bookshop Memories – Archives Books, Edmond, Oklahoma

The front of the Archives Books store in Edmond Oklahoma in 2009.

Archives Books – Edmond, Oklahoma

The front of the Archives Books store in Edmond Oklahoma in 2009.
Archives Books in Edmond, Oklahoma in 2009. Photo by Benjamin L. Clark

When I first visited Archives Books, it was very small, in the end unit of a nondescript commercial strip not far from the interstate in Oklahoma City’s northern suburb of Edmond. Apparently, the owner, Wayne, had a bookshop earlier and had a giant reset as things moved online. My first visit would have been in 2005, shortly after moving to the OKC metro. Chatting with Wayne, I gathered he closed the earlier shop to transition to going fully online, retool his business model a bit, and then realized a little walk-in traffic in a room full of unsorted dreck could still make enough money to cover the rent and be a place for walk-ins to sell him a houseful of old books when a bookish relative died. 

There were several thousand books. He had a couple of shelves up front for “better books,” individually priced but still not very expensive. Everything else was $1 per book: six books for $5, fifteen books for $10. You might buy the store for a very modest sum at some point in the scale. It was a great place to rummage around for the joy of the hunt and because there were treasures to be found.

It was like panning for gold. Most of it was crap — damaged books missing dust jackets, book club edition fiction from the 1970s, partial sets of dentistry yearbooks, 1980s self-help, pyramid schemes, political memoirs of candidates long forgotten, microwave cookbooks, that kind of thing. According to the staff, these were the leftovers that had been swiftly sorted for selling online — the duds. But, the staff seemed to know little about books. I suspected they used devices to scan barcodes and ISBNs to compare prices online since much of what was in those dollar shelves was too old to have an ISBN.

Condition was a problem, and the books were completely unsorted, except to be put onto shelves generally upright with the spine out. Generally. It wasn’t as bad as one thrift store I remember from my days in Lubbock, Texas, where I once observed that they must sort their books with a hay rake, given the horrific condition of everything. 

It was the kind of jumble where you didn’t feel bad about buying books to harvest bookplates or bookseller labels. The books had broken hinges, detached text blocks, or were otherwise irredeemable specimens. A touch of mold wasn’t out of the question. It was a wonderful place to hunt because anything can be found anywhere. 

In grad school, I picked up selling books and ephemera online for extra cash. And, though now out of school and gainfully employed, I still sold books and ephemera online. Also, sometimes, I would sell to dealers if I found something good that I couldn’t sell myself and get a good price. Dealers can sometimes pay better than a random buyer on eBay because the dealer has a client looking for that specific thing, and they understand the value better. For example, I could sell a $1 find online for $30, but a dealer may offer $50, because they have a client for $100 waiting. It’s a hard habit to break.

I’ve had some nice finds over the years and even sold some really nice things for pleasing sums, but funny enough, I don’t think I ever had one of those big finds at this shop. Nothing that paid the rent that month or anything with a single sale. But it was steady enough to go regularly, even just to add to my collection of bookseller labels and bookplates.

I did find a few issues of the first Star Trek fan zine, Spockanalia, in wonderful condition. Although I am not a die-hard fan of the show, I recognized that the zines would be of interest to someone else and probably worth more than the dollar or two it cost me to take them home. They earned me a little money and were fun to look through while I had them.

The shop also didn’t value old museum exhibition catalogs. I found some great references for the work I was doing at the time for the Oklahoma Historical Society and for my own interest. Once I was done with them, they were also worth a bit online. 

Sometimes, there were notebooks or loose papers mixed in with the books. Usually, someone’s long-lost homework or lecture notes. In those early days at the bookshop, there was often a large garbage can in one of the aisles to throw away any garbage you found. However, once I did find a small pocket notebook. From the outside, it looked old. Being a little familiar with old stuff, I was excited and opened it, fully expecting it to be a farmer’s running tally of planting wheat or something similar. But, no, it was a diary. It was not just some anonymous thing, but a diary where the young woman wrote her full name, location, and date of birth on some of the earliest pages, including when she began the diary — 1886. 

I put the little diary in my pile of books for the day and headed up front to the checkout counter. I thought Wayne would see the diary and tell me there had been a mistake in shelving it in the back. He meant to put it up front or even in the battered glass case he used as a counter. He never did that before, but you can never tell. “I wondered who would find that,” was all he said. I didn’t have the nerve to ask what he remembered about where it had come from. I wish I had. 

Other things could be reliably found there and sold online for a small profit, keeping my other book collecting funded. These included the little Golden Guide books edited by Howard S. Zim, some more esoteric Time-Life series books, Random House’s Landmark series, older Loeb Classical Library volumes, and many more. 

As time passed, the shop expanded into neighboring storefronts and became more organized. It was no longer nearly all unsorted dollar books, but sorted sections. Prices, of course, went up. The last time I went was several years ago, and they still had a small section in the back dedicated to the unsorted dollar books that stole my heart all those years ago. I hope they keep it forever, and some book lover is still finding treasures.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

RIP Trina Robbins

Trina Robbins speaking at the 2023 WonderCon in Anaheim, California. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia

I did not know Trina Robbins very well, but she has impacted my thinking and my work. She was the kind of person that, after hearing her stories and reading her work, I have a deep appreciation for what she accomplished, and I wish I could have gotten to know her more and talked with her about something we share — a passion for the work of comics history.

I had the pleasure of meeting her a couple of times in the past few years. The first time I met Trina was when I joined her on a panel at FanExpo in San Francisco in November 2022. I remember it as the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and our panel topic was the centennial of the birth of Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. Cartoonist and maze master Joe Wos, who organized the panel, invited Lex Fajardo, the editorial director for Schulz Creative Associates, and me (as curator of the Schulz Museum) to join him and Trina in a wide-ranging discussion of Schulz and his impact on cartooning. Trina was the only one of us to have really known Charles Schulz, bringing not only her stories of meeting Sparky (as he was known to those who knew him) but also her perspective as a Bay Area cartoonist and younger contemporary to him. It was fascinating and, of course, a lot of fun. Few people can tell the story about getting Charles Schulz to contribute a piece to a collection of cartoonists’ nude portraits.

Trina was in high demand that weekend, rushing from panel to table, signings, and other events that day. She joined us a few minutes late and had to leave the panel early for her next commitment, so I didn’t really get a chance to visit with her in that first meeting, though I got to basically sit next to her and hear her tell stories for an hour or so.

I’m so glad I remembered to bring my tape recorder with me, so I at least got audio of the panel—most of it, at least. The brand-new batteries I installed died, and I had to switch to my phone, but something went wrong—don’t try to talk on a panel and record yourself simultaneously if you can help it. At least I got a good chunk of our talk, which is now in the Schulz Museum’s archives.

The next time I saw her was at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2023, when we both had books nominated for an Eisner Award in the same category: Best Comics-Related Book. Attending the Eisner Awards is another story, but there’s a little time as people arrive and get settled in to say a few hellos. I saw her and said hello, and wished her good luck. I’m not confident she remembered me or even knew I was one of the other authors in her category, but she was very gracious. I was so overwhelmed just being in the room, so I don’t remember any other details, especially after Nat Gertler and I were announced as winning the category.

Though she was not awarded an Eisner that night (I thought she would win), her book about Gladys Parker is fabulous. Just as all of her historical work is not only well done but groundbreaking and essential reading. Comics is a rich field for study and enjoyment, enriching our lives as readers, thinkers, artists, and whole people. Trina brought that home, especially preserving, sharing, valuing, promoting, and shouting about women in comics from the rooftops.

After meeting Trina, hearing about her work, and finding her books, I looked at my own writing, my own thinking, and my own historical work and asked myself, “Where are the women?” In one project in particular that I’ve been slowly working on for a couple of years, a collection of short historical essays about the working methods of cartoonists, there were very few women initially. Now, it’s better, but there’s always room to improve. Thank you, Trina, for your work, for being wholly you.

UPDATE:

Andrew Farago compiled a wonderful collection of remembrances of Trina Robbins for The Comics Journal if you’ve not seen it yet.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

What does Montaigne mean?

“We set our stupidities in dignity when we set them in print.” —Montaigne, 1592

I like Michel de Montaigne — I’ve written about him before. For a guy whose life is pretty drastically different from mine, he made observations from his life that I find eerily applicable to my own. And I’m not the only one. His Essays have been in print more or less since they were first published in 1580.

Writer-who-draws (and thinker) Austin Kleon shared the quote I copied above (and into my journal) the other day, and I didn’t understand it right away. What does Montaigne mean? The more I think about it, the more it confuses me.

Portrait of Michel de Montaigne, 1570s
Portrait of Michel de Montaigne, 1570s

Does Montaigne mean that setting our stupidities in print improves them? My stupidities remain pretty stupid no matter what I do with them. Setting them in print sure doesn’t dignify them.

Or does it change the nature of stupidity at all? Is Montaigne saying that printing them merely dignifies them and does not correct them? In fact, whatever dignity is gained, the stupidity is all the worse now that it’s in print? Folly upon folly.

I don’t know.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

Bookshop Memories – 30 Penn Books, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

30 Penn Books – Oklahoma City, OK

Photo by the author, February 2009

This was a nice used bookshop. Good books, a nice selection that was well organized. A little higher priced than some of the other used bookshops in town, but still good stuff. I specifically remember being on the lookout for good niche local, state, and regional history books here. This shop was close to a place I liked to get BBQ — a little shack two brothers ran out of the parking lot of a nearby grocery store. I had gotten to know one of them well in my time in Oklahoma City, so I always called it Crain Bros. BBQ, but I think I was the only one to bother giving their smoke shacks a name. This younger brother, working on a Ph.D. in philosophy, ran this one near 23rd Street and Penn. They had a very nice lady who ran the till for them and packed up the orders inside the grocery store. The other brother ran other smoke shacks with other helpers at a couple of other locations. It was more his empire than the philosophical younger brother’s, who was helping out. The younger brother finished his PhD and is now a philosophy professor in the area.  

The smoke shack made a nice stop on a Friday when I felt like I could get away with a little extra long lunch break and could have a little drive. From the Oklahoma Historical Society, where I worked, down 23rd Street, I would grab some sliced brisket and sliced hot link and maybe a bag of chips and a bottle of ice cold Red Diamond iced tea from the grocery store — definitely not the cole slaw from the grocery store’s deli, which tasted like it had been soaked in fishy lake water. It was safer to stick to the pre-packaged stuff. 

I took co-workers to the BBQ stand on some Fridays, and being bookminded people, no one would protest if we also made a stop at this bookshop. One of my only distinct memories here was in the parking lot and one of my coworkers describing working with homeless patients with tuburculosis when he was an ambulance driver.

I wish I remembered more about this place, besides the parking on the south side of the building and the hum of the air conditioner that couldn’t keep up with the heat of Oklahoma’s summer workdays. I only vaguely recall the owner of this shop as helpful and alert, which was an anomaly for used booksellers in Oklahoma City in the early 2000s. I wish I had an anecdote of his generosity, kindness, and intelligence, but I don’t. Sadly, the owner was murdered in 2017, and his killer tried to cover his crime by torching his bookshop. I hope the owner’s family has found a measure of peace in time.  

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

Bookshop Memories – Michael’s Old Books, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Michael’s Old Books – Oklahoma City, OK

Michael’s Old Books, February 2009, photo by author

This is how I remember it: A sagging roof, peeling paint, cracked windows, maybe a missing pane replaced with a bit of cardboard. But there’s a sign that reads simply: BOOKSTORE. The hardened bibliophile will recognize the urge, this compulsion, to dive into what you are sure is a rodent-infested fire-trap, because, well, you never know. “Anything can be anywhere,” the old saying repeatedly proves. Perhaps it is more the domain of the true bibliomaniac to ignore potential and obvious hazards alike, to shrug away discomforts, and “just stop and look for a minute.” All of us who love books perhaps a little too much understand the impulse.

The proprietor of this establishment had no interest in actually selling anything, though. Michael’s Old Books was a horrid old house converted by someone, I assume, named Michael, but maybe the original Michael was long gone, into a book hoarder stash. If it could broadly be called a book, it was fair inventory for Michael’s. Pamphlets, wrinkled brochures, rain-stained phone books, obsolete test study guides, industrial directories of interest to nearly no one. The truly “old” books were either long gone, or long buried. Here we find merely the out-of-date, out-of-style, out-of-touch. The building was not air-conditioned, which could make visiting on sweltering days completely out of the question. Not as much because of the heat, but because of the smell.

It was also never open. A big, grubby, grouchy man perched on a stool near the back door. My recollections of him are so vague I cannot remember anything more specific, only the memory of his presence. I also vaguely recall an old electric box fan stirring the fetid air inside this building, but that would have meant he had electricity turned on in this place, and I don’t think that’s possible. I have no specific memory of even bookshelves here, but just massive piles everywhere. And the sense that, yes, perhaps it was once a bookshop, or someone many years earlier had started to set it up but gave up.

On one website, I once left this review: “Bring cash. This is a store for those seeking serendipity. Including when it may be open. The owner does not observe the posted hours. Dusty and disorganized. Again, bring cash and dress down. He settles on his opening price by how you’re dressed, how eager you seem, and how much of a nuisance you’ve made yourself.” It reminds me that I stopped there one day after observing some activity — I drove by there almost daily to and from work at the Oklahoma Historical Society. So, I was dressed for the office, and the proprietor had said something about how I was dressed when it came time to negotiate the price — which was always negotiated since none of the merchandise was marked in the customary fashion of used bookshops. 

As I wrote about bringing cash, and with the vaguest recollection along those lines, I must have bought something there once, but cannot remember what it could have been. I may have bought some bit of ephemera to donate to the archives at work — something I knew they would need, but was otherwise not that useful to me. 

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

Eisner Award Nomination

Silver circle foil seal for a Will Eisner Nominee book. Features the comic signature of comic artist Will Eisner, a large letter E as the central figure, and the word Nominee at the bottom. In very small print at the outer edge of the circle seal, it reads Comic Con International Comic Industry Awards

The book I wrote with Peanuts fan extraordinaire Nat Gertler has been nominated for a Will Eisner Award by the people who bring you Comic-Con International in San Diego each year! Voting has closed for the comics publishing industry award, but it’s been a thrill just to be nominated. I’ve never won an award and tended to roll my eyes at the idea of being grateful for a nomination, but I get it now. This is a recognition of the hard work of *so many* people. I’m so proud and grateful to my team at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, our publishers Weldon-Owen, and all the fans of Charles M. Schulz, who have supported the museum and all do a part in preserving and sharing the legacy of Charles Schulz and Peanuts.

Of course, the book is still available everywhere that good books are sold, and proceeds support the Schulz Museum. You can also buy the book directly from the Schulz Museum, which is a way to support the museum doubly. You can even leave a note when you purchase to request that I sign it, and I’m happy to do that.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

Celebrate the Art of Newspaper Comics and Support a Great Cause at the North Bay Letterpress Arts — Saturday, April 22

If you’re a fan of newspaper comics and letterpress printing and live in the North Bay Area, you won’t want to miss a special event hosted by the North Bay Letterpress Arts organization on Saturday, April 22nd. The “Sunday Funnies” event will feature a conversation with Benjamin L. Clark (me), Maia Kobabe, and Andrew Mecum, the Executive Director of NBLA, about the relationship between printing, comics, and beyond.

Maia Kobabe, who was once a member of NBLA, is an accomplished author and artist who has created beautiful books. Eir graphic novel, Gender Queer, has been widely banned (boo!), bringing em major media attention, interviews, (and a new book deal).

In addition to the conversation, there will be a short movie about the subject, live printing demonstrations, and fundraising party tricks. All guests will be treated to coffee from Retrograde, tea, donuts, and other fun snacks throughout the event.

This year, the month of May is also a memorial tribute to Dennis Renault, a political cartoonist and letterpress printer who sold Eric Johnson his iron hand press. Unfortunately, Renault passed away last fall. Examples of his work will be on display at the event, showcasing his life and legacy that perfectly embodies the spirit and wit of the “Sunday Funnies” event.

The event will take place at the North Bay Letterpress Arts studio, located at 925-D Gravenstein Hwy S, in Sebastopol, California. Doors will open at 4:00 PM, with the event ending at 6:30 PM. Sliding scale donations will be accepted in person at the event, or you can donate ahead of time online. Be sure to leave a note that it’s for the event or email the organizers.

All proceeds from the event will support the mission of NBLA, which is to democratize letterpress, lower the barrier of entry, and create more access for a wider audience, especially youth in the community. This year, NBLA is generously supported by a grant from the California Arts Council, along with support from local sponsors such as Sonoma County Libraries, the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, the Cartoon Art Museum, Blackwing pencils, and Retrograde Coffee.

Join us for an afternoon of fascinating insights into the world of newspaper comics and letterpress printing while supporting a great cause. We hope to see you there!