News: Comics in the streets

I am right rebuilding my library, adding shelves on top of all the old ones in order to be able to sort and shelf all the books, albums, pamphlets, comic books and so on, that make up the vast collection I have accumulated over the years. This means that I get the chance to go through most of my library, resorting it and evaluating what I have got, and make quite a few interesting finds along the way.

Anyway, this makes me extra sensitive to the news that parts of the collection of the French comics historian, author and co-founder of the comics festival in Angouleme, Claude Moliterni, have been found thrown out in the streets of Paris. The current theory seems to be that the heirs to Moliterni have sold his collection, and that an unscrupulous vendor have picked out the most valuable parts and just chucked all the "uninteresting" parts in the trash.

Whatever the reason, this is really disturbing. Since Moliterni was a prominent figure in the early days of comics fandom in France, it was not the expensive hardcovers or old comic books which should have been saved, but his correspondence, the research material for his books, his collection of pamphlets, prints etc. from various festivals around the world and so on.

I have a friend who is member of a large number of non-profit organisations, most of them focusing on the history of various geographical areas and/or on famous authors, and he has told me how he again and again has experienced how, when old members with vast collections/libraries have died, the heirs have had no feelings whatsoever for the historical worth of the accumulated information and have chucked it out, burned it, sold parts of it and so on. He strongly recommends everyone who owns such collections to write a will and to consider donating it to a public library or other organisation that can handle it and make sure it stays intact and preferably makes it available to researchers and so on.

In Sweden we have started The Swedish Comics Archive for that very reason, and there are more and more institutions like that around the world. So I agree with my friend, if you own a collection of historically interesting things, do consider writing a will, and avoid having your correspondence lying in a rain soaked street somewhere! Damn, I just realised that I'll have to write my own will...

Thanks to Simon Rohrmüller for the tip.