{"id":1515,"date":"2011-05-02T13:00:56","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T18:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/?p=1515"},"modified":"2011-05-01T19:55:21","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T00:55:21","slug":"spottswood-pays-tribute-to-the-king-of-comic-strip-collectors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/?p=1515","title":{"rendered":"Spottswood pays tribute to the king of comic strip collectors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not aware of any Kansas City connection for the late <a title=\"Bill Blackbeard obituary in the New York Times\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/05\/01\/arts\/design\/bill-blackbeard-comic-strip-champion-dies-at-84.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bill Blackbeard<\/a>, but his recent passing is noteworthy. Blackbeard was not a comics creator, retailer, or publisher; he was essentially a comic strip collector. An obsessive comic strip collector. Blackbeard&#8217;s immense collection of newspaper comic strips preserved entire runs of strips that might otherwise have been lost as newspapers began purging their bound libraries of back issues in the 1970s.<\/p>\n<p>Blackbeard&#8217;s archives became the essential resource for books collecting classic comic strips of the early 20th century. Those books, including Blackbeard&#8217;s <em>The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics<\/em>, influenced a great number of young readers to create their own comics.<\/p>\n<p>Kansas City cartoonist <a title=\"Daniel Spottswood\" href=\"http:\/\/www.disquietville.com\" target=\"_blank\">Daniel Spottswood<\/a> pays tribute to Bill Blackbeard:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/danielspottswood.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/NiX110525.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Blackbeard\" src=\"http:\/\/danielspottswood.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/NiX110525.jpg\" alt=\"Daniel Spottswood's Bill Blackbeard tribute\" width=\"576\" height=\"776\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not aware of any Kansas City connection for the late Bill Blackbeard, but his recent passing is noteworthy. Blackbeard was not a comics creator, retailer, or publisher; he was essentially a comic strip collector. An obsessive comic strip collector. Blackbeard&#8217;s immense collection of newspaper comic strips preserved entire runs of strips that might otherwise &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/?p=1515\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Spottswood pays tribute to the king of comic strip collectors&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[420,27],"tags":[496,642],"class_list":["post-1515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-creators","category-obituaries","tag-bill-blackbeard","tag-daniel-spottswood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kansascitycomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}