Item Spotlight - True Comics

One specialty of the Michigan State University Libraries' Comic Art Collection is the non-fiction comics of the 1940s, and a complete run of True Comics is the centerpiece of this part of the collection. More information requests come to us through our on-line index to this title than from any other title in our collection.

True Comics was begun in 1941 to "counteract the wild, rowdy superhero comics," according to comics historian Ron Goulart (The Comic Book Reader's Companion, HarperPerennial, 1993). The editors were David Marke, a historian, and later Elliot Caplin, a prolific comics writer.

True Comics, it could be said, sparked a small genre of non-fiction newsstand comics. Real Heroes, from the same publisher, lasted 21 issues (1941-1946), and other publishers produced similar titles: Real Life Comics (1941-1952), and Real Fact Comics (1946-1949), for example. True Comics was the most successful, lasting until 1950 and producing 84 issues.

Did You Know ...

• The Nye Popular Culture Collection has a large and rich collection of confession, teen, tabloid, men's, crime, entertainment, music, and scandal magazines covering a period primarily between 1930-1990.
• Edith and Arthur Fox, for whom the Edith & Arthur Fox Radicalism Collection was named, were long time Detroit labor and political activists. Both were employed in the auto industry and militantly involved in union work, he is Local 600 (Ford's Rouge plant) and she in Local 3 (Dodge Main in Hamtramck).
• Special Collections holds four newspapers produced by the African American students at MSU as part of the Ethnic Studies Collection: The Grapevine Journal, People's Choice, Speak, and The Legacy.