Please Consider Working With The Dylan Williams Collection

As announced here, it was recently my great honor to donate a portion of my comics collection to the Dylan Williams Collection at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

I knew and liked Dylan Williams. I've thought about him a lot since he passed away. The way I see it, his great contribution to how we think about comics is threefold: 1) His devotion to comics as a medium of personal expression. 2) How he put into personal practice that the power of comics as a medium of personal expression calls us to value the people behind that personal expression. 3) How he roped in the idea that seeing people profit is a significant part of how we might express that act of valuation. I think that string of ideas has a chance of being a dominant way of approaching comics as we move forward, not because of the novelty of any individual idea, but because of the seamless way in which they work together. Dylan Williams was important to comics, and something bearing his name should be important to comics, too.

I also have a selfish motivation in that Dylan was one of the first in my generation of comics-makers and industry people to pass away, and I'd like to see the collection in his name be the best possible collection it can be.

I have every confidence that Caitlin McGurk and the Billy Ireland people are going to do a fine job by Dylan and his memory. My understanding is that they have some minor procurement funds, because they're a serious institution and serious institutions make that kind of money available. It's not a lot of money, though, and the task before them is immense and is going to require judicious application of whatever modest amount of money exists to fill in blanks and shore up missing parts of the collection as it develops. The kinds of comics that Dylan Williams made and that he published do not feature beloved childhood icons for which an industry of nostalgia has sprung up as a barrier between initial publication and oblivion. Finding a lot of these comics is going to be chasing shadows across an expansive cultural landscape. It is a formidable task, which leaves a lot of the work up to people like you and me.

I therefore hope that as many of you as possible with something to offer this collection -- handmade comics; small-press comics of the '80s, '90s and '00s; your own works -- will at least consider making a donation. I urge my friends and fellow peers of Dylan's to doubly-consider doing so.

I don't speak for the library, but I have to imagine making an assessment of what you might have for them and then communicating that to them in a direct, friendly way with a willingness to follow up ("Hey, I have this kind of thing if it's something you want...") would be super-helpful. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) I hope that you'll do so. I'm also happy to answer any questions about my own experience, or provide any insight I can. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) If you've thought about donating, or maybe mentioned it, or even made initial contact, I hope you'll take the next step.

I'm grateful to have had this opportunity, and would love to share it with you. Please, please consider a move in this direction. Let's make this part of Dylan's legacy one for the ages.
 
posted 2:30 pm PST | Permalink
 

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