[Comicsstudiessociety] Randy Scott retires from Michigan State University Library's Comic Art Collection

[Mike Rhode]

Due to an editing error, the 2nd two paragraphs of Randy's essay were
omitted from the initial posting:

A little context might help. I was then a recovering student radical,
having left
college for a while to argue for regime change in the streets, as it were.
I learned,
for example, that biting an officer of the law will get his attention,
but that they don't taste good. Also I learned that six months in
jail is no fun. I was hired, fresh out of jail, by the Curious Book Shop
in East Lansing, in June 1971. Ray Walsh, the proprietor, had been a
fellow student worker in the Michigan State University Libraries a
few years before, and his science fiction specialty shop
looked like a good place to hide from the law. The store grew into a
real antiquarian book shop, and I became the comics guy, because that's
what the store needed. It was a kind of boot camp. For two years I
sorted, graded, priced, and sold comic books under the guidance of Walsh.
With Ray, I attended two Triple Fan-Fare conventions in Detroit and ran the
Curious tables. We were in on the beginnings of the network of stores that
led
to the direct market for comics. It was a boom time for comics collecting,
and
I started reading and collecting comic books myself.

  This intense activity was a refuge from serious notions of smashing the
state, but I was still looking for ways to change the world. The evil
empire of
comics-rejecting English departments seemed like a good place to start. I
decided to take the situation in hand, get out there and write important
books
and, you know, do stuff. In those days that counted as a plan of action. One
of the shop's customers, Professor Russel Nye, had just published his
groundbreaking *The Unembarrassed Muse* (New York: Dial Press, 1970). He
was going to be my role model, and I started taking English classes. After a
couple of graduate courses in English, it turned out that that literary
analysis
was not my metier, but my determination was not really quenched.

On Wed, Nov 2, 2022 at 8:58 PM Mike Rhode <mrhode at gmail.com> wrote:

> Randy Scott retires from Michigan State University Library's Comic Art
> Collection
>
>  by Mike Rhode
>
> International Journal of Comic Art blog <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ijoca.blogspot.com/__;!!KGKeukY!y_6AhpGrSNBcmhVXrLooYYkg-4PK3mnjNkQQ-La7oQDmEsKM6zPruyUkb25Nl5Mwt77NKBu8-MH4Kfzek4YUo3Zq-Rc$  >
> November 2, 2022
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ijoca.blogspot.com/2022/11/randy-scott-retires-from-michigan-state.html__;!!KGKeukY!y_6AhpGrSNBcmhVXrLooYYkg-4PK3mnjNkQQ-La7oQDmEsKM6zPruyUkb25Nl5Mwt77NKBu8-MH4Kfzek4YUkMh5-oo$  
>
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