Toronto cartoonist donates ‘King’ material to Billy Ireland
When the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum receives original work from a cartoonist, sometimes the collection is less than comprehensive.
“Sometimes we’ll get collections that are just the original art, or a sampling of the original art, but no papers,” said Caitlin Mcgurk, the associate curator for outreach at the institution on the campus of Ohio State University. “Or we’ll get just the papers and not the artwork.”
With a recent acquisition, however, the Billy Ireland received everything but the kitchen sink.
In mid-february, the library received a plethora of original materials from, and relating to, cartoonist Ho Che Anderson’s three-part graphic novel “King: A Comics Biography of Martin Luther King Jr.”
“It’s rare that we get collections like this that are not just the original art but literally the whole package of everything that went into this specific work,” Mcgurk said. “This is the whole thing,
which has unbelievable research value.”
Although the collection will not go on display at the museum immediately, individuals can make appointments to view the materials at the Billy Ireland’s reading room (email appointments are required). And museum leaders say the art will likely be on public display soon.
“I’m certain that it will find its way into multiple exhibits in the future,” said Mcgurk, adding that Anderson’s work will also be available for students.
“It will be used for teaching, probably in the immediate future,” she said.
The collection benefits from what Anderson describes as his “pack rat” tendencies.
“I’ve got sketchbooks and notebooks going back to grade school,” Anderson, 51, said in a recent phone interview from Toronto, where he resides.
“It wasn’t difficult for me to keep that stuff as a personal archive,” he said. “But, as I’ve gotten older and as I’ve gotten further into my career, I’ve started to see the value of posterity.”
Several years ago, Anderson began contemplating finding a scholarly archive to deposit the materials he accumulated in creating “King.”
“My first thought was I should look for some sort of comic-book archive, preferably an American archive,” said Anderson, who eventually learned of the Billy Ireland.
“I wasn’t sure of the response I was going to get when I reached out to them,” Anderson said. “Fortunately, they were very enthusiastic about taking the work off my hands.”
In 2019, Anderson was invited to the Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) festival, where he first laid eyes on the Billy Ireland and its almost-overwhelming collection of comic art, which includes 300,000 original cartoons and 2.5 million comic strip clippings.
“(They) showed me a bunch of Charles Schulz originals and Milton Caniff originals and stuff from Japan and from Holland and from around the world,” he said. “I was just blown away by the depth and the breadth of all the material there.”
“King” has its roots in the early 1990s, when Anderson, then at the beginning of his career, had a conversation with his publisher, Gary Groth at Fantagraphics in Seattle.
“He knew I was one of the few Black creators in comic books at that time, and he had always wanted to do a series of historical comic books and he wanted to start with some kind of story about Martin Luther King,” said Anderson, who was born in England but relocated with his family to Canada at age 5. “I knew about King — I didn’t have a great familiarity with him — but I smelled an opportunity.”
Anderson immersed himself in books and documentaries about King, and while he quickly recognized the visual potential of the story, it was challenging to translate his research into narrative form.
“It’s one thing if you’re just creating something out of whole cloth, but when you’re taking on a subject like the civilrights movement in general, and Martin Luther King specifically, there’s a lot of responsibility there,” Anderson said. “It
“I was just blown away by the depth and the breadth of all the material there.” Ho Che Anderson Cartoonist
required so much research and thought and second-guessing of oneself.”
The project ultimately swelled to three volumes, released by Fantagraphics in 1993, 2002 and 2003.
“In my mind, it wouldn’t have been sufficient to just do the truncated, coldnotes version,” Anderson said. “You needed to really dive into the minutiae of it.”
“King” anticipated what became a trend of graphic novels revolving around major historical figures, including “March,” the much-acclaimed multi-part series revolving around (and co-written by) the late U.S. Congressman and civil-rights leader John Lewis.
Anderson’s graphic novel, though, continues to endure for its powerful depiction of King.
“It’s so vivid,” Mcgurk said. “It wasn’t the story that I had heard before about Martin Luther King Jr. It’s much more human, and paints a more honest and realistic picture of his life.”
Upon the release of the first volume in 1993, Publishers Weekly praised the work in a review: “The stark blackand-white illustrations erupt from the page, perfectly capturing the visual force of a violent and heroic period in American history.”
Anderson is happy that his work now is housed under the same roof as work by Schulz, Caniff and so many other cartooning legends.
“Anybody who is lucky enough to share space with all these luminaries, and all this incredible work, is a pretty lucky guy,” Anderson said. “I feel like I made the right decision.”
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