Once upon a time there was a Comic Book Museum, started by cartoonist Mort Walker of Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois fame. The museum was originally located in 1973 in a mansion in Greenwich, CT then moved to nearby Rye Brook, NY and then on to a facility built in Boca Raton, FL That shut down in 2002 when two major financial backers went bankrupt, said Walker, 84. A plan to relocate to New York City fell through in 2006. Cartoon aficionados were sad.
Now the contents of the museum have found a new home at Ohio State University…happy ending. Ohio State University’s Cartoon Research Library said it’s acquiring and plans to display the collection of the International Museum of Cartoon Art, about 200,000 works that have been in limbo since the museum’s last physical location closed six years ago.
The museum’s original drawings for comic books, comic strips and animated cartoons, as well as display figures, toys, collectibles and films, will double the size of the library’s cartoon art collection, said Lucy Shelton Caswell, the library’s curator. Ohio State expects the collection to arrive early this summer and is looking for a larger space for its Cartoon Research Library, Caswell said.
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