When I started working on How Comics Were Made in 2023, I realized quickly that there were a lot of people I would want to thank later. I started taking notes. Those notes eventually led to nearly two full pages in the completed book in the smallest legible type I could manage. So many people offered their time, artwork, insights, and moral support. Many artists and photographers licensed their work for use without fees; others set very modest rates due to the historical nature of the work and how it celebrates the industry.
To thank all these people again, I’m reproducing the text of those acknowledgements here.
Backer Thanks
This book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of literally thousands of people who participated in the crowdfunding campaign or later pre-ordered the book. Thank you for your trust in believing that this very out-there idea could turn into something you’d hold in your hands.
A number of people went over and above in helping bring this book about by offering key additional sponsorship. This additional financial flexibility let me make this the best possible book.
A big thanks to Oriana Leckert at Kickstarter and the folks at PledgeManager for their help in launching and continuing the project!
Personal Magnate-ism
Bruce Oberg, at the “magnate” level, provided unrestricted funds, which I put to good use.
Thank you, Bruce!
Picture Yourself in a Field of CMYK
Several people provided significant support as part of their “Good Grief! I’m in the Book” reward, which included unique Peanuts flong and appearing in this tome. You might spot the following folks in illustrations by Mark Kaufman on pages 11, 29, 51, 61, 87, 113, 135, 171, 225, 248, and 253: Bean Bailey, Brian Coppola, David Holets, Elizabeth Rose (the likeness of her father, Charles Rose, appears), Joël Franusic, Karen Anderson, Mark Danks, Matt Blaze, Michael Müller-Hillebrand (his daughter Hannah’s likeness appears), Pasha Sadri, Rick Kirkman, Sean Kleefeld, and Troy Ricketson.
Acknowledgments
This book is the result of the generous contribution of time by many cartoonists, academics, curators, researchers, and comics industry people. I start with huge gratitude to the staff of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Without the Billy, this book would never have grown from a seed to a tree. Caitlin McGurk and Ann Lennon encouraged my interest in making a video about the history of cartooning and printing, ultimately including it in two exhibitions. Without them, I wouldn’t have started down this path; they provided moral support all along the way.
Many thanks to Susan Liberator, who manages the Billy’s library and who helped me shape my research and pull materials from nooks and crannies; and to Emma Halm, who heads up digitization, and dealt with cheer and aplomb with dozens of scanning requests and piles of licensing and copyright permissions documents. Great appreciation to Jenny Robb, the curator who leads the Billy, and to Anne Drozd, museum coordinator, for their ever-present thumbs-ups! And to Emma, Gabriella Stauffer, and Mashayla Berry, who spent months carrying out my scanning requests. Thanks to Kristy Arter for her administrative help.
Dozens of cartoonists, publishers, production people, historians, and academics let me get on the horn (or the Zoom) to ask them weird questions about the way they—or those they study or work for—make comics. Thank you so much for your time, Robb Armstrong, Bryant Alexander, Derf Backderf, Brian Basset, Tom Batiuk, Tauhid Bondia, Matt Bors, Paige Braddock, Barbara Brandon-Croft, Luke Coleman, George Corsillo, Meg Nash, Rich Dana, Georgia Dunn, Lex Fajardo, Nick Galifianakis, Guy Gilchrist, Roberta Gregory, Bill Griffith, Brad Guigar, Steven Heller, Will Henry, Lynn Johnston, Mark Kaufman, Jim Keefe, Dave Kellett, Rick Kirkman, Susan Kirtley, Sean Kleefeld, Keith Knight, Michael Jantze, Peter Maresca, Dan Martin, Patrick McDonnell, Wiley Miller, Mark Newgarden, Andy Pearlman, Eric Reynolds, Erin Samuels, Joey Sayers, Brian Walker, and Shena Wolf.
My appreciation goes to Garry Trudeau and Bill Watterson for allowing me to excerpt our email correspondence. Thanks to Lynn Johnston and Katie Hadway for permitting the extensive reproduction of For Better or For Worse artifacts. Margaret Miller has my gratitude for allowing me to reprint some of her extraordinary 1993 photos.
Michael Chabon loudly cheerleaded this project even before I announced it, and I am so grateful and delighted he wrote the foreword.
Lucas Wetzel at Andrews McMeel (AM) Publishing was a big help in telling the modern part of the story—thank you! Thanks to AM Universal CEO Kirsty Melville for encouragement. And thanks to Jane Turner, senior production manager, and Melissa Mallory, manager, Digital Color, at AM Pagination Service for capturing and providing screen images. Thank you to Bunny Hoest, Patricia Sulser, and John Reiner for approval to show how The Lockhorns is digitally colored.
My additional gratitude to Brian Basset, George Corsillo, Georgia Dunn, Bill Griffith, and David Nathan for allowing me into their studios and homes; to Paige Braddock and Alexis Fajardo for a tour and chat at the Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates buildings; and to Derf for being a research buddy on this journey. Bill also generously let us use Zippy in the book and in a special flong re-creation/letterpress print.
Benjamin Clark at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center served as a sounding board and morale booster on the project, and his 2022 co-authored book (with Nat Gertler), Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects, was an inspiration for how to tell a story about cartooning through materials. Thanks to Sara Breaux, for her time and insight while archivist at the Schulz Museum. Gigabytes of scans were created or retrieved for me by Dinah Houghtaling, the museum’s Director of Collections & Exhibitions, for which I am grateful.
Elizabeth Rose was kind enough to speak from New Zealand about Meyers List, a company owned for several decades by her family and for which she worked. While I thanked Matt Bors above, he gets a second booya for giving me a nudge in 2023 to shift focus solely from an industrial technology approach to the artist-led one you see here. The kindness of Peter Maresca extended to providing high-resolution scans of newspaper pages: Gasoline Alley and Little Nemo in Slumberland. Eric Reynolds of Fantagraphics did a signal service in trusting me with a set of Rubylith separations in “flip” form for a Love & Rockets cover that I scanned and reproduced in this book.
Archivists, curators, and librarians are the backbone of support for any researcher. In addition to the Billy Ireland and Schulz Museum, thanks as well to Karen Green and staff members at the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Molly E. Dotson and staff at the Princeton University Library Special Collections, and Moira Fitzgerald and staff at the Yale University Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library. Sara W. Duke of the Prints & Photographs Division at the Library of Congress provided sage advice for navigating LOC assets.
Thanks to Archives Canada for their work in scanning original material by Lynn Johnston. Appreciation to Lucy Hernandez, at the Hoover Library & Archives at Stanford University, who dug through John Ehrlichman’s papers. Thanks to the Boston Public Library for the scan of the 1891 Yale–Harvard Boston Herald game illustration.
Madeline Smith and Greg Dickerson of Sound Publishing came in on a day off to let me watch Sunday comics be printed—thank you! Frank Romano graciously let me reproduce his photo of dozens of phototypesetting fonts, and to quote from email correspondence. Thank you to Jyrki Vainio, Meg Nash, Nicholson Baker, and Margaret Brentano for material from their collections.
Without the permission to reprint material under copyright, this book would be about 70% lighter and 95% less interesting. My full appreciation goes to Dominique Bigle at Classic Cool, which manages the rights for the Milt Caniff estate; Raegan Carmona, BreAnn Dunlap, and Suzanne Garrett, Andrews McMeel Universal; Scott Olsen, King Features Syndicate; and Richard DeChantal, Tribune Content Agency. And particular extra appreciation to the trio of the Schulz Studio (Alexis Fajardo), Schulz Museum (Benjamin Clark), and Peanuts Worldwide LLC (Craig Herman) for providing the various signoffs to reproduce so much material drawn by Charles M. Schulz or involved in printing Peanuts. Because few people have licensed printing of comics artifacts before, I thank all these organizations for working with me on something so far outside their normal purview.
This book was helped through “beta” reads by a number of people who contributed their expertise, historical knowledge, and personal experience to help make it better. Thanks to Derf Backderf, Georgia Dunn, Lex Fajardo, Jim Keefe, Sean Kleefeld, and Dan Martin. An extra set of kudos to Guy Lawler (Legion of Andy website) for his detailed notes that improved the chapter on the Ben Day process. All errors remain mine!
Getting a densely illustrated, heavy ink coverage book printed is an intense process. Thanks to JP Witham and Hemlock Printers in Canada for bearing with me endlessly.
Two mentors have helped me down this road over the last several years: Jenny Wilkson, Partners in Print, and Dr. Elizabeth Savage, University College London, offered advice and fostered my work—Jenny in design and letterpress printing, Elizabeth in research and academic writing. In this vein, thank you, too, to classmate and friend Michael Gerber (The American Spectator), and to editors Michael Dolan and Tessa Jean Miller for their support and commissions. I worked for seven years with Marcin Wichary on his massive Shift Happens book, and I appreciate so much what I learned—and his support on this project.
My collaborators on this book were a joy to work with: Mark Kaufman, Harry McCracken, Scout Festa, and Jan Wright. As The Nib was about to sail into the sunset, I reached out to Mark to ask if he’d design the cover and book—it was so much in his wheelhouse, he stepped right up to steer the design helm. Harry was already one of my favorite business and technology editors, and after years of work (and friendship), I was glad to be able to tap into his deep well of comics nerdiness. I’ve turned to Scout and Jan for a plethora of projects and many books, and it was a pleasure to get to work with them again, with their consummate professionalism, attention to detail, and good humor.
Also Chris Philpot, whose ability to turn a pile of reference images and too many words from me into technical illustrations you’ll see at three key points of the book. And Jessica Spring, letterpress maven, with whom a chance meeting in London—despite us living 45 minutes apart—led to finding our shared love of Zippy the Pinhead and her production of special flong re-creation prints.
My love to my family, Alyx, Ben, and Lynn, for their support and endurance of endless flong talk!
