Hidden in plain sight at Ohio State is a superlative: the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, the world’s largest academic research collection of cartoons and comics — more than 2.5 million originals, from 19th-century newspaper strips to today’s graphic novels.
Named for Ohio cartoonist Billy Ireland, the museum’s free galleries rotate treasures from the vaults: original “Calvin and Hobbes” art by Ohio’s own Bill Watterson, Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo,” underground comix and manga. Scholars from every continent book time in its reading room.
Its exhibitions are witty, gorgeous and quietly profound about an art form America invented.
Comics grew up. Columbus built them a library worthy of the literature they became.
