Comic strips Museums

If only I had continued with my Howard the Duck scrapbook, some museum would have a treasure

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D. D. Degg August 17, 2021 1 minute 2 comments

Nearly 100 years ago I. A. Persinger began pasting Wash Tubbs comic strips into a scrapbook.

In 1928, the barber, I.A. Persinger, began compiling this collection of “Wash Tubbs” comics, a well-loved daily newspaper strip by artist Roy Crane, whose adventure graphics popularized the visual sound effects—Bam! Pow!—we know so well today. Soon, though, the scrapbook expanded with handwritten insights from Persinger and his customers on life during the Great Depression.

Now the scrapbook has found a home in a museum.

Persinger’s scrapbook has found a new home, one its creator probably never envisioned—a place among the rare books and manuscripts of the Columbia University Libraries. The unusual artifact was acquired by Karen Green, the school’s Curator for Comics and Cartoons, whose expanding collection makes the case that the funny pages and other cartoon creations are worthy of serious study.

Atlas Obscura talked to Karen Green about the new acquisition.