Thanks to recent gifts, we have far more Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese comics waiting to be cataloged than we can handle – even with the broad range of language skills among the cataloging team! 
The Comic Art Collection is heavily used by MSU students and faculty working in the fields of history, literature, and cultural studies. Help us support their research by putting more Asian comics on the shelf!
by ARUN RATH,
National Public Radio's Weekend Edition (July 27, 2014 )
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=54054
COMIC-CON EISNER AWARDS: 'The Oatmeal's' Matthew Inman honored after creative shift: 'Writing these comics was risky for me'
By Michael Cavna
Washington Post Comics Riffs July 28 2014
COMIC-CON EISNER AWARDS: Israeli graphic novelist Rutu Modan draws upon war — as she hopes for peace
By Michael Cavna
Washington Post Comics Riffs July 28 2014
NEWS from the LIBRARY of CONGRESS
July 28, 2014
Public contact: Martha Kennedy (202) 707-9115, mkenn@loc.gov
Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ada@loc.gov
Swann Foundation Fellow Erin Corrales-Diaz to Discuss
Cartoonists' Artistic Responses to Disabled Civil War Veterans
Swann Foundation Fellow Erin Corrales-Diaz, in a lecture at the Library of Congress, will examine political cartoons that interpret war-induced disability during and after the American Civil War.
Corrales-Diaz will present "Empty Sleeves and Bloody Shirts: Disabled Civil War Veterans and Presidential Campaigns, 1864-1880," at noon on Thursday, Aug. 14, in the West Dining Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., Washington, D.C. The lecture is free and open to the public. No tickets are needed.
Corrales-Diaz will focus specifically on images by such well-known political cartoonists as Thomas Nast (1840-1901) and Joseph E. Baker (approximately 1837-1914). Artists like Nast fought a "paper war" by using political cartoons to sway public opinion in support of specific political candidates, issues, and ideologies. During battles with the brush and the pen, a new social figure emerged who embodied patriotism and heroic sacrifice—the disabled veteran.
The rise and influence of the pictorial press in political campaigns coincided with the American Civil War. As developments rapidly unfolded on the battlefield and in the news media, the disabled veteran became a figure charged with significant political power. Artists quickly drew upon his maimed body as a campaign strategy, according to Corrales-Diaz. Focusing upon political cartoons for presidential campaigns from 1864 to 1880, Corrales-Diaz will explore how the broken body of the veteran became an emblem of a charged political visual rhetoric and generated a re-evaluation of the veteran's social role in 19th century America.
Corrales-Diaz is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is focusing on the art of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. In her doctoral dissertation, entitled "Remembering the Veteran: Disability, Trauma, and the American Civil War, 1861-1915," she examines the complex ways in which American artists attempted to interpret war-induced disability after the war and argues that the veteran's injured body became a vehicle for exploring the overwhelming sense of loss and disillusionment during the war's aftermath. Corrales-Diaz completed an M.A. in art history at Williams College, and a B.A. in art history at the University of Washington, Seattle. In addition to the Swann Fellowship, she has received other awards and fellowships including the Joan and Robert Huntley Art History Scholarship at the University of North Carolina in 2012 and a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship from the U.S. Department of State in 2010.
This presentation, sponsored by the Swann Foundation and Prints & Photographs Division, is part of the foundation's continuing activities to support the study, interpretation, preservation and appreciation of original works of humorous and satiric art by graphic artists from around the world. The Swann Foundation's advisory board is comprised of scholars, collectors, cartoonists and Library of Congress staff members. The foundation strives to award one fellowship annually (or biennially) to assist scholarly research and writing projects in the field of caricature and cartoon. Applications for the 2016-2017 academic year will be due Monday, Feb. 15, 2016. More information about the fellowship is available through the Swann Foundation website at www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/swannhome or by e-mailing swann@loc.gov.
The Library of Congress, the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 158 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.
# # #
PR14-120
7/28/14
ISSN: 0731-3527
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Library of Congress | 101 Independence Ave SE | Washington DC 20540-1610 USA | 202.707.2905
We had great
experience traveling in Japan, and we saw three things in particular that may
interest readers of this blog: The Kyoto International Manga Museum, the Studio
Ghibli Museum outside Tokyo, and the Moomin House Café in Tokyo.
Their collection entails
nearly 300,000 items related to manga, according to the museum. To Erin and me,
the more impressive part of the museum was the reading library aspect. They have about 200 meters (about 650 feet)
worth of shelving holding nearly 50,000 manga volumes. This photo of Erin
browsing the books shows how the manga is accessible and available to grab from
the shelves. [photo 2 – Erin browsing Manga
Museum shelves] I’m not sure how you get
to the higher levels in this picture – I didn’t see a ladder – but they were
not behind glass. There were manga volumes available to read on all three
floors of the museum. They had manga from around the world - also available to
pull from the shelves to read - but ComicsDC editor Mike was not impressed with their North
American selection [photo 3 – Manga from Around the World].
They have very
affordable annual passes for kids that allow unlimited visits - about US$12 for
elementary aged children and US$36 for middle and high school aged children
(US$60 for you adults). I had read online before visiting that lots of school
children go there to hang out after school and read manga. They have a
children’s reading room that is comfortable and nice. We were there at a time that was most likely
during their school day (when isn’t it during the school day for a Japanese
student, with their cram schools and such?) and there were only a few kids. There
were mostly Japanese adults there, men and women. Seniors even. Manga in Japan
is truly for everyone.
One neat thing you
can do at the museum is get a manga portrait of yourself done. Erin and I sat
down together for a portrait and I’m so glad we did. It’s one of my favorite
souvenirs from the whole trip. [photo 4 – Anime Karla and Anime Erin] The
artist was Nakahara Kasumi. The lettering at the top in purple and blue is our
names spelled out in Japanese phonetically. It’s funny to me that she drew Erin
flashing the peace sign. Erin did not pose that way. Instead it was a flourish
Kasumi added -- and I know exactly why. It’s because whenever you see Japanese
school children – and we saw this all over in Japan – taking a photo of each
other at a shrine, a temple, in the city, anywhere, they always, and I mean
ALWAYS, pose flashing a peace sign. Boys, girls, teens, kindergartners. Every kid,
every time in photos. It was cute that she drew Erin that way too.
Unfortunately there
were no photos allowed inside the museum, so these photos are all outside.
There were so many details to discover, like the soot sprite window in the
Totoro ticket booth that greets you at the entrance [photo 5 – Karla at Totoro
ticket booth], all the beautiful stained glass windows with Ghibli characters
and scenes, the Jiji-shaped (the cat from Kiki’s
Delivery Service) faucet handle on a sink outside, the art
nouveau/steampunk water fountain and bench. Mayazaki’s movies so effectively
use scene to create a mood, and so does the Ghibli Museum. The style of the
museum is an odd-sounding English country/steampunk/art nouveau mix that
somehow melds together in an evocative and beautiful way. 
The Ghibli Museum
restaurant is a real treat in and of itself [photo 6 – Totoro at The Straw Hat
Café]. We waited for about 45 minutes to get in, but once we did it was all
worth it. The style inside the restaurant, called The Straw Hat Café, is
particularly English country. The food was served on adorable dishware with
Ghibli characters and embellished with Ghibli flags [photo 7 and photo 8 – The
Straw Hat Café food]. If you go and want to take home the cute flags, save them
from your food because they sell them at the restaurant for $6 for a set of
four! On the patio outside the restaurant, they sell beer that is only
available at the Ghibli Museum [photo 9- Ghibli beer] – which, unfortunately
for my husband, I couldn’t take home unopened.
One Studio Ghibli
footnote from our trip that shows what Ghibli films can mean for the Japanese:
we had a wonderful visit to a hot springs bath village called Shibu Onsen in
the “Japanese Alps” in Nagano. The village was very old with all wooden
buildings. It had nine different hot springs baths that you could visit for free
if you were staying in one of the inns in the village. Picture traditional
wooden Japanese architecture, narrow cobblestone streets, and being able to
walk from one end of the village to the other in about ten minutes. Our
innkeeper was a lovely woman named Keiko, and when we checked out of the inn she
noticed the Totoro paper fan I was holding that I had gotten at the Studio
Ghibli gift shop. With delight, she asked if Erin and I knew the film
The food is prepared
in the most kawaii way! [photo 12 – Moomin House Café
menu] All the food, both sweet and
savory, is prepared including shapes from the Moomin universe. We ordered
dessert there: Hattifattener madeleine and pudding in a souvenir mug for Erin
[photo 13 – Hattifattener madeleine and pudding in a souvenir mug] and a
whopper of an assembled dessert for me that including Hattifattener and
Moomin-shaped cookies and a Moominhouse cake [photo 14 – Crazy Moomin
dessert]. It was almost too kawaii to
eat. Almost. J At one point when I had gotten up to go look around at the
gift shop, the waitress came and set the Snork Maiden down next to Erin. You
can see Little My in the background, sitting at the neighboring table. Like
everywhere else in Japan, service was excellent, and the servers at the Moomin
House Café made sure that all the customers had a guest Moomin family member at
their table at one point or another during their meal.
Karla Hagan teaches physics by day and
only occasionally has a comics blogger alter ego (ok, never before). She is
totally qualified to write this blog post by virtue of living three doors down
from Mike. The comics are strong with
that one.
The new store is a nice well-lighted place on P St, NW, at 21st St, next to Second Story Books and above Subway. They may be a BIT overstocked on Saga and The Walking Dead this week. Cartoonists Carolyn Belefski, Joe Carabeo, Matt Dembicki, Shannon Gallant and TR Logan attended the opening, signing copies of the new Magic Bullet #9 free anthology from the DC Conspiracy. More pictures are here.
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