Billy Ireland tour

I finally watched the recording of Caitlin McGurk‘s tour of the Billy Ireland Museum for the New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium. Shaky cam aside, this is an incredible document. Not only do we get to peek inside the museum, we are presented with the amazing history of the institution which involves the careers of Milton Caniff and Bill Blackbeard. For instance, I had known of Blackbeard and own his famous Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, but I had no idea that much of what we have now of those strips is due to him single-handedly traveling the country and collecting newspapers that libraries were throwing away.

Anyway, if you love comics and haven’t yet, watch it. The embed below doesn’t seem to work so here’s the link.