[music] Welcome to The Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host Gil Roth, and you're listening to a weekly podcast about books and life, not necessarily in that order. You can subscribe to The Virtual Memories Show from the iTunes Store, and you can find past episodes, get on our email list, and make a donation to the show at our website, chimeraabscura.com/vm. You can also find us on Twitter at vmspod@facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow, and at virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com. Now, a few weeks back, I told you about my visit to Columbus, Ohio. It was in the episode with Tova Mervis, well, it's three episodes back. When I went to Columbus to see two exhibitions at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at the OSU campus, and the exhibitions featured Bill Watterson, the cartoonist behind Calvin and Hobbes, and Richard Thompson, who's best known for a comic strip called "Caldusack," which I think of as the best daily strip in the post-Calvin and Hobbes era. When I was a kid, there was a comic store in Livingston, New Jersey, and my brother and I considered it to be like Mecca. We only got to go maybe four or five times in our youth, but it's funny, because last week's episode involved an interview with a guest, Daniel Levine. I interviewed him at his parents' home in Livingston, New Jersey, and it reminded me of the lengths that I've gone to in my life for comics and how that may have changed a little because I didn't really feel any urge to drive over to the Livingston Mall to reminisce. But I also realized that just a few weeks earlier, I'd made a trip out to Columbus, Ohio just to see these two cartoonist exhibitions, as well as get in some good interviews. Now, you can visit cartoons.osu.edu to get more information about the library and museum's collections, as well as the Watersin and Thompson exhibitions, which run through August 2014, and the other events that they put on, as well as the collections they've got there. It's a really gorgeous venue, and if you care at all about comics, you really should make the trip. Now, when I was in Columbus, I planned to sit down with Caitlin McGurk, the engagement coordinator at the museum, to talk about how she curated the Thompson exhibition. The problem was, Caitlin only got back to Columbus a few hours before our conversation after a sleepless, all-night bus ride from New York City, and I was still in the aftermath of the fantastic, but I have to admit, overwhelming conversation I'd had with DG Myers a day earlier. Which is to say, we did sit down and record, and this episode is the fruits of that conversation, but you should be warned that this conversation goes all over the place. I hope that's enough of a disclaimer. Now, Caitlin McGurk is the engagement coordinator, as I mentioned, at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. She was previously the head librarian at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont, about which there's also quite a story. She got her BA in English and Creative Writing, and her Masters in Library and Information Science at Long Island University's CW Post Campus. And now, the virtual memory's conversation with Caitlin McGurk. What's your job description? Okay, so. You got the engagement coordinator, but I think it's a little different than wedding planner, but I'm. It's far different than wedding planner, and that job description is a thing of, well, it's a little complicated. I essentially was hired here on a one-year contract to start with, and back then, my job title was Visiting Curator, and then after that year, they rehired me for a two-year contract and changed it to engagement coordinator or whatever it is. A big thing with the OSU libraries, unfortunately, is that each special collections library, which we are one of, can only have two curator titles, technically. However, we are the largest collection here, and we also have the only one with a museum. And so, even though I'm a curator and I've curated exhibits here, they're still trying to figure out a way to make it a curator title, so anyway, that is what that is, but as far as what I do, well, I was, I have the great honor of being one of the very few, if not only people who had a position entirely created for them at OSU, so the position I have here is not the one I applied for. I didn't get the one I applied for, but Jenny liked me so much that she decided to push, I don't even know how she pulled it off, but push through OSU bureaucracy to get a brand new position created within a month that was catered to, like, what my skill set is. So, knowing that the library would be opening up a new museum and everything, she really wanted to figure out a way to, you know, be more connected with the public and with the cartoon and comics community and stuff like that. And also with, like, a younger generation, because a lot of people view our library, or at least used to, as, like, the newspaper comics place. Sure. And we're trying to change that, of course, you know, so, so I'm here, I think the best title, really, for me, and what it'll eventually probably will be, is Outreach Curator, because I deal with the public, generally, so I'm, like, the, you know, the face of the Cartoon Library in a lot of ways where I deal with the student body, so I teach classes here. What sort of classes? Comics history classes. Basically, I don't teach, like, a full, credited course, but essentially a professor can come to me from, you know, any discipline who wants to bring their class in to learn about their subject through the lens of comics, and I will create a syllabus for their class. So I've done, like, women's studies classes learning about, like, the history of women in comics, or the history of how women have been portrayed through comics. I'm doing a class at the Lyma campus in two weeks, my very first psychology class. It's called Psychology of Gender and Humor, and so they want to look at the way, yeah, gender has been portrayed, and, like, how the, how well we find funny has changed about, you know, gender roles over time through comics. We've done, like, theology classes, talking about religion in comics, obviously history classes where we mostly focus on political and editorial cartoons, and the biggest thing, of course, that I teach is just generally English or art classes that want to come in and just get an introduction to the cartoon library, a history of comics as told through the gems of our collection, and, you know, yeah, learn how to use our resources and stuff like that. So, so that's how, that's mostly how I deal with the student body, but I also run the docent program, so we've partnered with the Wexner Center, who has a, you know, long-established docent program, and, after we moved in here, I started training their docents, some of which have been doing tours for, like, 30-plus years, to give tours of comics, which is very difficult, so, like, talking to-- How's it different? Well, it's hard for many-- I can tell a lot of stories about this, but the-- I would say the docent group, I think there's, like, 150 docents, probably 80 percent of them are, like, retirees, and, you know, elderly folks who either worked in the arts or were teachers, and they do this now, just, like, for fun and their volunteers, and then there's another percentage of them that are actually students who are doing it for class credits, I don't know what their major would be that they do docents and stuff, but anyway, so, I'm a person who, you know, works in comics, knows a lot about comics, and I'm teaching people who know nothing about comics to talk to other people who know nothing about comics about comics, which is, I mean, very difficult, and has been extremely eye-opening for me because, you know, Jenny, Rob, and I talk about this all the time, like, sometimes you're just so far down the rabbit hole that you just don't realize that not everyone reads comics or knows who Nancy is, or something, you know, like-- and so the questions that people come out with, sometimes I'm just, like, I don't even know how to answer this, because I-- it seems so obvious to me. I was giving a class once where I actually, you know, was doing a slideshow of some of the treasures from our collection and, you know, big highlights and whatever, and I was going back-- I went back and forth between images of Ernie Bushmiller and Nancy, and an image of an original page from the spirit, and I had a student raise their hand and say to me that they couldn't tell the difference between the two. Yeah, that's completely inconceivable to me. And not even just, like, aesthetically, like, she was like, I can clearly see that these are done by two different people, but why does either of these matter? Why are either of these interesting? And, you know, another big argument that I think is fascinating and probably true in some ways is that an older docent said to me that they were having a very difficult time trying to figure out how to run their tours of the Cartoon Library, because all the other tours they've given, which are usually, like, you know, contemporary art, whatever, their view of art, at least art that should be in museums, is that it needs to require interpretation, whereas comics is, in their opinion, it handed to you. There's nothing to interpret, you read the story and then you move on. So she was like, how am I supposed to engage them with this and this and that, and it was like, wow, that's a very interesting point. And it does, you know, draw a big line and change how you work with this kind of stuff, but, so we ended up getting into a big topic about, a big conversation about, you know, the cultural value and the societal value, you know, as social commentary and everything else, historical value of comics versus just interpreting an abstract painting or something like that, you know. And, you know, my argument has always been, you know, you go to so many museums, like, museum natural history or wherever else, and, you know, there's a piece of pottery that was done by some, by an Aztec sitting in the case. Like, that doesn't interpret, you don't need to, you're not interpreting that. Like, why is that art? And comics are an art, you know. Like, so that some things, some things are there because they are representing, you know, cultural or historical point and they're interesting because of what they tell us about that point in time and how, how the different artists or the, the readers were, you know, viewing our world or, you know, using things in our world as tools rather than just, yeah, a piece of modern art. So, so yeah, so I deal with the docents and they give tours to generally the public and school groups, stuff like that. And then I also, I guess the next thing really would be that I work with comics fans and scholars. And so, I run a blog about comics history for the library. I run all of our social networks, Facebook and Twitter. And, you know, answer questions. I go to conventions and talk to people in the community and just basically do whatever I can to try to engage people with our library. And that also ends up including, like, booking and running events here. So, cartoonist workshops, lectures, things like that. How did you get started in comics? Not in the librarianship, but, but comics themselves. Ah, that's a long story. But, basically, how far back do you go, I guess? I guess I go, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I've traced it to some weird things, including, like, having been once a pretty devote Catholic and my, I was an altar server and sometimes I think that my experience with the stations of the cross in stained glass at the, at the church was, like, my first, you know, exposure to sequential art because I was obsessed with them. You know, the way my church was set up was that where you lined up for, to receive communion, you were lining up against the stained glass stations. And so I would be, like, pushing people forward so I could get to the next one. Yeah. So, sometimes I think that's a start of it, but that's clearly not, like, a direct thing. It's got McCloud, I'm sure it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. So, but, further than that, you know, I was raised by my brother and my dad. My brother was super, super into comics. And when I was younger, I wasn't so much into reading them as I was into, like, collecting the trading cards. But I at least had a lot, a lot of exposure to them. But the biggest thing that I would kind of credit it to is that I got a job probably when I was, like, I don't know, 19 or 20 or something and still living on the island. I was, I was living in Huntington Village. And there is this amazing little, like, nostalgia auction house there called Just Kids Nostalgia. And I started working there. And it just so happened that the first auction that was happening when I worked there was an underground comics auction. And I had never seen or heard of, like, a lot of these people before. Like, I had a vague idea. How old were you? It was probably 19 or so. But I, I then was, you know, holding in my hands, like, you know, original or crumbs or just, you know, even just, like, the, the, the greeting cards that some of these guys had gotten their start by making. And anyway, it was my job to, like, photograph and put this stuff on eBay and come up with descriptions of them. And I just, like, that was it. I just became so obsessed with it. And I had been exposed to some of that stuff before, but never in a way that I really got to spend time with it, you know? So then I was in undergrad around that time and there was an amazing professor at my school named Isaac Kates, who is a cartoonist and educator. And he was teaching in the English department and he decided to teach a class on graphic novels. And so I signed up for it. And it was an English class where he kind of bent the rules and, you know, for the first half of the, for the first half of the semester, whatever we read and studied graphic novels. And then for the second half, we had to make our own mini-comic. And he, you know, these are none of us were like art majors necessarily, but we were all like having to force ourselves to make mini-comics. And, and he, you know, later on ended up being the very first person to bring me to a convention, which is Mocha. He asked me if I wanted a table with him. It's just like, I don't know what I'm doing. But that was that, you know, initially meeting him and hearing him talk and stuff was when I first realized like, Oh, there's a lot more to this. Like there is a new academic acceptance of this and maybe I can work in that somehow. And then when he brought me, brought me to Mocha for the first time, and I saw people who were my age, who were also making this stuff and I was trading with them. And, you know, this whole community of people that knew each other, it just like, it just blew my world apart completely. And so it changed everything. And I went home and read the hundreds of mini-comics. I got and wrote a letter to like half the people that I got them from and got letters back. And it just expanded from there. And boy, there's a lot more to do you still get to work on your own comics at this point. Not so much. I mean, which is fine. I've kind of, a few years ago, when I was up at the Center for Cartoon Studies, I kind of like switched my roles and felt like, you know, I'm now going to be just like comics librarian and still do things where I can. But a part of it is like, I'm around comics all day. So sometimes when I go home, I want to have like something else outside of this and not necessarily just like be alone and drawing my own comics. But I have been lucky enough to be invited into like a number of anthologies over the past couple years. And so I just submitted something that's going to be an anthology that comes out in June. And I was in Josh Beyer's suspect device two years ago or maybe a year ago. So I do stuff like that. But I haven't really been tackling something entirely of my own, nor do I really have any desire to. Like I don't have any big ideas right now that I want to focus on. I'm trying to focus on like music and stuff like that in my own life. But you know, still draw occasionally. So yeah. And your family gets the gig that you're in. What's their response like from them? Now it's great. Now that I'm a university with a football team. And it's finally legit. But like they were mildly devastated when it first started. I mean, I've always been an artist. And my father has always been amazingly supportive of that. So I actually went to went to. I did the art instruction schools, the corresponding school that Charles Scholz did when I was a freshman in high school. And so I've always like, you know, the interest in drawing and making comics was there since way back. But like the exposure and everything didn't happen to later, which is what I was saying before. But you know, my father paid for that. And it was, it was great. I was initially going to go to art school. But you know, I, he definitely really kind of reinforced this idea in my head. But I had already felt like, you know, do I really want to go to school for something that I'm going to have to like compete to make money for? I mean, everything's competition. But you know, I didn't want to, I didn't want to ruin my passion by having to like commodify it or anything like that. Same with writing because I did creative writing as an undergrad. But I just felt like I don't want to just try to be a journalist or magazine writer or something because I, I don't know. There was just something there where I just didn't want to like marry my, you know, my church and my job that closely. So, so, you know, especially when it came in time that I was in library school and focusing entirely on comics, they were just panicking and didn't think it was a good idea. But you know, I'm an ex exceptionally stubborn person and stuck with it. When I got hired at the Center for Cartoon Studies, that wasn't even bigger things. It was like, Oh my God, you're leaving New York City to go live in Vermont in the middle of nowhere at a school no one's even heard of. They're paying you half of what you make here. You know, what are you thinking? So that was bad. And but but they saw how well I did there. And then when this job came up, it was just finally like, Oh, wow, you actually pulled this off. Was there that sense that it's a small field? Essentially that, you know, you're you're there's not a whole lot of people who were trained as as comics librarians who can, you know, do what you do. Well, Jenny and I both always say that it's a career career path that we strongly do not recommend to anyone because there's like four jobs to have. And between she and I, we've had all of them, at least in the US for the most part, but have you mentored anyone? Has there been any interest? Yeah, well, I wouldn't say I've mentored anyone just mentored them. Yeah, I wouldn't say I've mentored anyone who specifically is hoping to be a comics librarian. But I, you know, I recently had my first intern that I felt very attached to who is, I think, just graduating high school this year and wanted to specifically work with me. I was like, how do you even know where I am? But she came and worked here for three months. And now she's interning with a cartoonist in in New York City. So, you know, there's those kind of internships, but I have it. I don't know. I've done work with a lot of students who are getting their masters in library science right now, and they have wanted to work with a comics collection. But I guess I haven't met anyone yet, but I'm like, oh, this person is like trying to go all the way or something, you know. And what's Columbus have to offer? I mean, it looks like you're really building this, that not you personally, you guys as a group are building this collective presence here for the museum, to make this a destination. I mean, I came out here. Sure. I think it's the greatest place I've ever lived. I think, and for so many reasons, and I feel like people are sick of hearing me go on about this, but like, number one, it is extremely cheap. I mean, extremely cheap. I have half of a house and I pay $500 and I have washer and dry or different, you know, whatever, it's very cheap. And I live in a great neighborhood. So beyond it being cheap for groceries, rent, everything like that, it also, I think I was told has the is in top two economies in America right now. So there are so many jobs here because I think of the, of the university that probably helps a little bit. There are so many jobs here. It's crazy. I don't know anyone who's moved here and had too much of a struggle finding some work. You know, depending on what they're, what they're looking for or willing to take, I guess, but there's that. It's also got like the pure Midwestern friendliness that goes a long way. People are extremely genuine. Now, you know, at first I was a little bit freaked out. Yeah, because I was like, what's this is like, everyone's too nice. What do they want from me? This like, I had this really funny incident when I first moved in here where I, you know, I moved to a house completely alone. I'd never even been to the state before getting this job. So, you know, I got an apartment, moved in, not knowing anyone. And I think my second night in my apartment, there was a knock on my door. And I come to the door and I'm like a little bit concerned about who's knocking on my door. And it's this girl. And she's like, oh, hey, my name is Karla. I, I live next door. I saw that you just moved in. You probably haven't had time to go by groceries yet. And I made extra food tonight. So I thought I'd bring you some leftovers. And I was like, what? It was bizarre. You're not trying to stab me? I know. It wasn't poisoned, you know. And so, it was incredible. But that has really been a constant experience of my time here. You know, like, everyone is just so friendly and supportive. It was very easy for me to find a music scene and a comic scene here because everyone's just so welcoming. And like, everyone is super interested in collaborating, but not with the idea of like, because I'm going to climb a ladder or get to the, you know, top. It's really just like, hey, you like this? I like this too. Let's hang out and talk about it, which is amazing. But, um, and it just feels like, I don't know, it almost feels like a weird hidden secret unsung America kind of thing because it's like, there's all this great stuff going on here that no one knows about. And we're almost afraid of people finding out about it because then it might get ruined or turned into like Williamsburg or something. But like, right now it's so pure and genuine and has like, I mean, boundless untapped potential. Like the kind of businesses that this city is still missing that could really thrive here and stuff like that, an awesome indie comics store, a publisher, you know, like that could all happen here. And I think would be really, really supported. So anyway, it just feels like it's like the new frontier for comics or something. And obviously with the, um, the Billy Ireland Museum here, it's, you know, an amazing resource for, for people as well. And it's also, I think Tom Spurgeon is the first person to really point this out to me. But it's so well located geographically because it's, you know, really not a far drive from the East Coast cities and not a far drive at all from the Midwest cities or southern cities really. So it's just good. Yeah. Plus gigantic football and gigantic football. Oh, another point to that I'll just throw out there. Um, fun fact, there are more cartoonists from Ohio than any state in America. Why is that? I don't know. I did this like two hour long presentation about it and I still haven't figured it out. I think, I don't know what I think it is. I think part of it is that like, because technically or at least, you know, back in the day, there, there wasn't a ton to do here. So people were just kind of like, yeah, the weather wasn't great. You stay inside and you draw a day and I don't know. But, um, you know, and there's this trifecta of the greatest forms of comics that were all started in here. So, you know, Richard Altar did the yellow kid Lancaster, Ohio, Jeff Smith, Bones, self-publishing, Columbus, Ohio, uh, Robert Crum did drugs for the first time in Cleveland, Ohio, Harvey Peacart, Cleveland, Ohio, like there are so many and obviously, how could I forget, uh, Superman, the birth of Superman, Cleveland, Ohio. So it's really, it's kind of astounding, but it's pretty cool. Do you, um, do you make cartooning pilgrimages at all? Uh, go out to, uh, like, we have the Thurber house here in Columbus, anything like that that you've, you've done for, for cartooning? Not just here, but, you know, no, totally. I, I got to go to the Schull's Museum recently, so I was going to San Francisco anyway to visit my, uh, one of my best friends for her birthday and she, um, does work for peanuts doing licensing. And so I'd been wanting to go there forever and so it was a perfect excuse. So we drove out to Santa Rosa and I got to see that museum and have dinner with genie Schull's. So that was great. Uh, and, um, what other big pilgrimages of, well, I would say one of the most like powerful things I did and this wasn't even a very long drive, really, but I, uh, not too far after I moved into, uh, Columbus, they unveiled the Harvey Peacart statue in the In Cleveland Heights Public Library. So I drew, drew out for that and I had a friend of mine who was staying with me from New York, he's a comics fan and it was just incredible because I remember going up there, it was like a really rainy day and I was like, wow, maybe I'll see a lot of like old comics friends and people I know that are probably like flying in from all over the place to go to this thing and we get there and it's a completely packed house, but it was all just like locals who loved him so much. Like I may be recognized to people and they were cartoonists I know from Ohio, you know. So to be there for that, you know, to hear Joyce's speech and just to see like the people of all ages, little kids that knew him that from hanging out at the library and stuff that were there and, you know, crying was I did too, like, and that statue itself is so beautiful. Anyway, that was a really, really powerful one. But at this point, I just, uh, you know, I'll be going out to Mocha this weekend in New York and to the Society of Illustrators via a P party on Thursday night. Uh, you should check out the, I hope it's still showing the, uh, the, the Drew Friedman old news medians. I don't know if you saw my, my, uh, you probably haven't seen the pictures from, from that event that I posted. My headshot on Facebook is now me and Abe Vigoda. Oh, I did say that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I can't believe I would have loved to have been there. It was fantastic. It was just one of the, I got there crazy early and it was me, Eric Reynolds from Fantagraphics, drew his wife and an L Miller who runs the Society and someone came inside said, I think Joe Franklin is outside waiting to come in and Drew is like, that don't worry. He's going to wait there until somebody recognizes him and then he'll, I joked that I was going to go out with my camera and just take a shot or two. So he would, oh, no, no, I'm afraid I can't take any pictures. I have to go. So that, that's, you know, that's great. Yeah. I think it's still up. I mean, I saw tons of people's photos from that and I was like dying. That's, I, I'm at a point now where I, I'd like to, like, boast and feel like the events that we do here are the ones that everyone is jealous of in the comics world that they can't be at. But that's one of the few things I was like, are you kidding? I would have killed to be there. That was, that was something. You know, I still make a point to go, I haven't been to Mocha in years. So I used to go every year, but I still go to SPX every year. And I always will. I've gone to cake in Chicago the past couple of years. And now I'm going to short run every year or two out in Seattle because it's, I think that's one of the best run conventions I've ever seen. It's all female run and they're just doing, they're doing something different that I can't even put my finger on, but it's like, what's the focus on? Great. Well, it's indeed an alternative comics to the most part, but you know, it's run by, it's run by cartoonists, Aaron Franklin and Kelly Fro. And so it's not like the Portlandia thing with the women and women first, but right? I'm just making sure. No. And I mean, the fact that they're women isn't even like a big part of it. It's just like, I, as far as I know, it's the only female run comics convention, but they just have really tight programming. They have a good sense of comics history that they bring into their programming, like the fact that they had Roberta Gregory highlighted. I was like, thank you. I've never seen Roberta Gregory highlighted as a comic show, stuff like that. And for the Sherry Flanagan, you know, comics, but yeah. And also just being able to, to, you know, visit fanographics, of course, and spend Thanksgiving this year with Gary Groff at his house was awesome. Go out shooting. Yeah, I wish. Please promise that someday that might happen. Geek out moments, meeting someone in person, you know, any cartoonists you just completely either have melted down around or expect that you would completely, which then leads to my question of what's your dream exhibition to put on, but geek out moments first. Okay, geek out moments. Well, actually, meeting, you know, and I'm not just saying this, but meeting Richard Thompson was a huge deal. Having been that like enveloped in his work planning for this exhibit and everything. And of course, his entire story and the situation in which I met him, which was, you know, I had these plans to go out to his house and to go. He would be there and the two of us would go sit in his studio for two days and look through everything he ever did and talk about it and this and that. And then he goes and breaks his hip like two days before I had to be there. So I met him in his hospital bed and like fed him his dinner and stuff and was able to talk to him. And he was just like this glowing angel of a human being, you know, who barely seems real, but meeting him and every moment I've spent with him has been like just otherworldly. People have really freaked out about, well, this isn't super directly comics related, but before I got really into comics, I was very into zines. And, you know, there's some obviously plenty of crossover there, but Cindy Krab, who did the Doris zines, hugely influential on my life. I think I have friend of mine made a photocopy of their copy of it and sent it to me on Long Island before I could get anything like that when I was like 17 or 16 or something. And it was like incredible. And she lives in Athens, Ohio, owns a farm and came to one of my friends' shows. And he was like, "Oh, Caitlin, this is Cindy." I was like, "Sindy." Oh, oh my God. And I like, I melded down and she's just a regular person, but anyway, you know, it was amazing to meet the Hernandez brothers. That was a big deal. Most of all, probably Dan Class, who, to my great surprise, was like just the most normal-seeming dude ever. Yeah, we met before T.Kaff. We both flown in on the same little tiny airline. He from Chicago, me from Newark, into Toronto. It all has this little airport that there's a ferry that brings you into the downtown Toronto. And I got there, it said to my wife, "That's obviously Dan Class." You look just like him. Yeah. I've refrained from going over to talk to him, but eventually Tom Devlin came to meet him and we just sort of started shooting the breeze and made a Seth joke. You know, basically it was just one of those, "Oh, it's actually kind of easy, and I shouldn't be intimidated by the fact that you're Dan Class." But still. But it's like, I mean, he, of course, goes to world the movie before the comic, which is my age. It was like huge, huge in my life. I mean, I remember watching that movie like probably every week. It's cool, but it, so, you know, meeting him was incredible, but he was so instantly like someone that I could be at ease with. And it occurred to me how much of a schtick, his whole like looking frowny in pictures thing is because he's like smiling constantly. And then when I got him to take pictures of me in the Garfield statue and stuff, he instantly just like puts on this brooding face. I said, "What are you doing?" It's ridiculous. It's the anti-selfie king. Yeah. Yeah. But, and I think Eric expects me to say Bill Waterson, but I've met Bill Waterson twice now and I didn't melt down at all. You know, Kevin Hobbs, I did love when I was younger, but I wasn't, I don't think I was as obsessed with it as some people are. And he was also just so normal, you know? Like he looked like an IT guy that jogs or something, like he's just like, you know, I pictured him taller. I don't know, he smelled really good, he wore a cord of my pants, like he's, but he's just soft-spoken and nice. I think because of his whole, you know, mystique, people assume either maybe he's a real jerk and that's why he doesn't want to talk to people or maybe he's so socially awkward that it's like, you know, that's the reason he avoids it. But no, he just wants to have his own life and not have to be bombarded by fans all the time, which he would if even like one picture of him got out, you know? So I'm sure he doesn't want to have to have such tight reigns on it as he does, but it's totally necessary, you know, the point that he is in his fame. So there was this amazing moment when I met him for the first time, which was here, because he came in to review the pieces for his show that Jenny had picked. And, you know, he's just, yeah, sweet, soft-spoken, not awkward, all really charismatic. And we decided to take about some lunch right across the street at the Wexner Center Cafe. And the Wexner Center is like the cultural arts hub of Columbus. There's always like, you know, 100 plus people having lunch in there every day, who are artists and fans. And we go in there and it just like heard to me that like, no one even looked at. And I was like, no one knows that you're Bill Waterson. I don't know, it's Thomas Pinchin, I swear. Yeah, but it was just like, you can, I get, that was a moment where I felt like I really got it, you know, because I was like, wow, you can just, you can just be a normal person and not have to worry about it. You know, if any, if a single person in that room heard it was Bill Waterson, there would have been a freak out, you know? So I really understood it and respected it even more in that moment and, and just continue to now. So, you know, when, you know, when he's been out here, of course, we're very respectful of, you know, I'm not asking him to pose a Garfield or anything for my Facebook page, so. But I'm incredibly disappointed in the show only because no snowman, there's only one snowman. Yeah, seriously, it was just one, well, clearly, when they hit the four seasons, second along the wall, and I figured winter, you know, yeah, one snowman strip, I was, I was crushed because I think that's really, sure, that, that was part of what I realized going through, it was like, well, what do you take down, you know, everything else is, you know, critical to this, too. Exactly. And that show is packed. I was, I got mad at Jenny because when I was curating my Richard Thompson show, you know, I had to fly out there and get the stuff and Jenny was like, we do not want to crowd a gallery, you know, like don't select more than like 80 items or whatever, so I come back and it was so hard for me to even break it down to 80 items from the thousands of things he has. And then Jenny does her show and it's all like stacked so long, so I was like, what is this? But she was like, I don't, I don't know what happened. I just lost control, you know, I couldn't cut it down further. When I was here Saturday, it was so well received. I mean, I get people were coming in out of a typhoon, but you know, you just, it was funny. I think I mentioned on Facebook, my experience with the Watterson was more the familiarity and the, oh my god, these are the strips from my childhood and as reconnecting with an old friend. While the Richard Thompson, I felt much more connected both in terms of seeing an artist really at work, seeing, you know, how things are made, how it all comes together under Richard's pen, especially since there are so many different types of things there between the spot illustrations and the caricatures and all the cul-de-sac strips and the Richard's Poor Almanac, but thank you. Dream exhibition. Was this the first one you curated by the way? This is my first show. I helped Lucy and Brian Walker very closely on the initial exhibit we did here, but not like entirely on my own. So thank you. I feel really, I mean, overwhelmingly happy with how well it was received. Dream exhibition. Well, there's one that's coming up that I'm curating with someone. I just don't know if I can talk about it yet. But maybe I can. Let's just say it's related pretty directly to the history of Topps and the underground comics movement that was funded by the history of Topps, technically. So that's going to be an amazing one that I'm very excited about. Did you get to go to the not that we're drawing connections to anything that you happen to go to the Jewish Museum in New York to a gallery? I haven't gotten to do it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's wonderful. Is that still up for this video? No, I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah. But it was it was fantastic. Yeah. So beyond that, though, the ones that I would like to do in the future, if you know that one, we'll see if that happens, would be Barbara Sherman, which is probably one of my favorite cartoonists of all time. She's one of the very first female cartoonists, maybe the second female cartoonist for the New Yorker. And her stuff is amazing early feminist cartoons that no one remembers at all. You know, I remember I did a blog post about her when I first started here and had found her stuff in our archive. And I was trying to do research and I was like, there's nothing. This person is that's what's heartbreaking sometimes about writing the blog is I'm like, there's not a thing. No one remembers this person at all. You know, we can be like Seth and make up a completely fictional cartoonist and yeah. Yeah. But I mean, the one person who had done research on her or the two people really were Trina Robbins, of course, and Liza Donnelly, who loves her. And so I got to correspond with Liza a little bit about her. But Barbara Sherman's stuff, I can't recommend it anymore highly. I would love to make a reprint book with of her stuff with the show. But it's really just like all of her depictions are like, and this is from the 30s and 40s. And it's like women smoking cigarettes and drinking and making fun of men that they're married to, you know, and just, or just like, you know, refusing, refusing, you know, the expectations and stereotypes that were pushed on them. It's just great. And she's a fascinating person who never married for the bulk of her career. I think for like the like 60 years of her life never actually had an address because she was just traveling and like crouching on people's couches. The other reason I know a lot about her is because we have that Eldon DeDini collection here. He was a big playboy cartoonist. And Eldon was good friends with her because they were both writing and drawing for Esquire and New Yorker for a while. And in his collection, he saved all of his letters that he wrote him, which are just so revealing and hilarious and fun. So yeah, those are top dream exhibits, I would say. Has the library museum at all done connection with a publisher in terms of trying to do, you know, exhibition guides and things of that ilk? Or is that a copyright issues or is there any problem with those? Well, we've done a few, and we have one coming out for the Calvin Hobbs Show. It's being published because that show is going to travel. So Jenny is writing it. Jenny will also be conducting a very long interview with Bill Anderson, which will be published in that catalog. So they're probably going to do kind of a walkthrough of the exhibit and talk about the pieces that are in it and we'll record and transcribe it all. And that'll really be the catalog. Of course, a lot of those pieces are going to be over at Nogulem because he was, you know, won the Grand Prix or whatever. So we have someone coming out from Nogulem to look through. Is he going to send somebody in his stead, but pretend that person is Bill Waterston? Because I think it would be hysterical. Of course we got it being because Jenny's gone out a few times. Oh, no, I just figured the, you know, just sending some schlub. And yeah, and Bill Waterston, you know, just just, you know, just totally, yeah, because I almost sent Tom Spurgeon once as me to an event in Spokane that I was supposed to go to. I just figured these people have never seen I had shot him. I could send Tom instead, even though he was at that point almost three times. But still, they wouldn't have known it was me. I mean, we'll see. I think either Jenny or I will go in his place probably, but I've never been on to Nogulem. So I'm kind of begging that she lets me go. So the last question about the horribly traumatic experience at your last job. Well, I figured with the new Noah movie coming out, you'd have an issue. Basically, you survived a Roland Emmerich disaster movie scale event at the Center for Cartoon Studies library. This place is on a better flood plain, right? There's less issues in the water here. Okay, because that's all the descriptions that I read from you about how, you know, essentially just lethal weapon, you know, things exploding everywhere. You guys running around trying to save cartooning materials. That's a real sign of dedication and devotion to this art. Thank you. That was a crazy experience. I had that point in my contract, I had less than a month left on it too. So it was pretty funny to be dealing with all that. But one of the most amazing things about that night, and I can't remember if I mentioned this to like Tom when I talked to him. No, I wouldn't have actually. That night, that the Hurricane which was like literally falling apart. In the dark with a freight train smashed into it. Yeah, and I'll tell the whole story. But we, that was the night I got the email from OSU asking if they would, they could fly me out for an interview here. Did you say tonight? Yeah, right. But how eerie is that? I remember in the middle of this stuff, I like ran home and checked my email real quick and I'm like, what? What is this? Oh, what? They're flying me out for an interview like all the timing. You know, I couldn't even answer them for another like week. But that was, it was insane. You know, the, what's interesting about that is that we, well, we just didn't see it coming at all because it actually was barely raining in white urban junction. However, and I wasn't, I certainly wasn't at that point used to living in the mountains. It was raining so bad up north that everything was coming down. And so we kept looking at the rivers throughout the day and we're like, wow, it is raising a little bit. But it's, you know, it's not even bad here. So it'll probably stop soon. And then, you know, one of my friends who had volunteered at the library was like, we should let's take a walk down to the river and see what's going on. And we get down there and, you know, ended up spending essentially the rest of the night there, watched as the, so this, the library was unfortunately placed right on the edge of the river. But the building was kind of on a hill. The first floor was, I think, a yarn shop and some other stuff. And then the, you know, the main floor was, was the library and an oddity's museum called the Main Street Museum. So we're there and, you know, the parking lot, you know, dips down. And so the river starts spilling into the parking lot and it just keeps going. And eventually the water is spilling into the road. And then we watch as all of the windows on the first floor just smash open and the water comes pouring in. And this thing, if you've seen images of the, the building itself was like built on these stilts. Like, it's just not, I don't know. You know, it's like, of course, I can't hold it against anyone because no one would ever expect that to happen. But it was not really a proper place to have a museum, a lot of library. And so, you know, within moments, of course, of all of that and the weather getting worse, all the power went out. And the only light that we could see by was this like flashing emergency light in blue and making this horrible noise that was going off. And, you know, James Sturm is in there like with his cell phone trying to like use the light of a cell phone to see what books. At first, if it was a matter of like, you know, do we just try to triage and figure out what to. Yeah, you know, let's save the things first. And, you know, so, of course, I went for our Rare Books collection, which included like the entire Bound Volume, like Library Bound Volume series of the Nickelodeon magazines. So it's like, let's go to the next magazine. It's kind of out of here. And we were moving everything. Well, we were just really just literally throwing things into my station wagon and driving it up the hill to another space. So, you know, nothing got too damaged, but it was really just no thought put into like, you know, losing the whole organizational system, which I ended up spending the rest of my time there fixing. But, you know, at first, we're like, let's just move everything to higher shelves, because maybe it'll stop. And then, you know, when those windows exploded and everything else happened, we just decided to get it all much to the chagrin of the cops and fire department, who were there screaming at us to get the hell away from this building. As you mentioned, while we're in there, a freight train car crashed into the side of the building. So the whole building shook a truck that had gotten swept off of a highway, came floating down the river, broke the bridge in half. And while I broke the bridge in half, the like diesel tank exploded. And so, our building was full of gas. So, honestly, when the building was full of gas, that was like, probably the only hour that we weren't in there, just like waiting for it to dissipate. And, you know, cops screaming at us. But, yeah. It's things we do for comics. It's things that we do for comics. I remember I set my, my apartment, because there are some folks who lived in, in houses in that town, cartoonists who lived in houses in that town, they were a lot closer to the river than mine was. And so, I had, you know, in between running around with all that stuff, I had set my apartment up with like little like fake cots all over the floor. And I had, I think, like seven lady cartoonists sleeping on my floor, I'm running back and forth. But it was a hell of an experience. So, and now the library is 10 times more beautiful, and in a much better location. And, yeah, the old post office building that they, they bought right on Main Street and White River. So, it's good. I just, I was worried, because with all the crazy rain and wind on Saturday, I, I saw the water kind of high, here's it. Well, chances are, that's Caitlin's already thought about it. Yeah. Well, what's funny is in our old space, before we were in this building, we were across the way in the Wexner Center complex below ground. And it was like one of the only tornado safes spaces at OSU. So, when we moved out of that, I was like, this was great, and I'm like, what if something happens? So, luckily this building has been here over 100 years, and nothing's happened. So, it was a fantastic collection. Caitlin McGurk, thanks so much for coming on The Virtual Memory Show. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. And that was Caitlin McGurk. If you care about the art and history of comics and cartooning, you really ought to get out to the Billy Ireland Museum in Columbus at some point. The Richard Thompson exhibition, which Caitlin curated, as well as the Bill Waterson one that Jenny Rob curated, will be on until August 3, 2014. You can visit cartoons.osu.edu for more information about the museum's location and collection and hours and all that good stuff. The permanent exhibition there is also really, really impressive. I'm very happy with the way they display comics and cartoons and ephemera from the eras. It really is something. And that's it for this week's Virtual Memory Show. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week with a conversation with Lynn Sharon Schwartz, the novelist essayist short story writer and poet, about her new collection of essays, as well as a very interesting project she did back in the early 60s. It's coming back now where she recorded author readings from, well, the likes of James Baldwin and John Updike and Philip Roth and guys like that. Meanwhile, please hit up our website chimeraabscura.com/vm and make a donation to this ad-free podcast. And if you've got ideas for guests, drop me a line at Groth at chimeraabscura.com or at VMSPod on Twitter or at our Facebook page, facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow. And it wouldn't hurt if you went to the iTunes store and looked up the virtual memories show and left us a nice review and rating. I'm just saying. Until next time, I am Gil Roth and you are awesome. Keep it that way. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
