EAST LANSING, Mich. — According to Michigan State University, they have the largest comic book collection in the world, and Randall Scott has been caring for it since 1973.
Scott is the university's comic book bibliographer, so he’s responsible for the rows and rows of comic books in the basement of Michigan State's main library.
The collection started with 6,000 comics donated by an MSU professor named Russel Nye in the 1960s.
“I've been begging for gifts and begging for money to buy stuff. And now we're out at about 350,000 comics,” said Scott.
The shelves hold works from as early as the 1800s all the way to 2021.
The collection houses comics from every continent, except Antarctica. It has household names like Batman, Spiderman and Superman.
“This collection means a lot to me, and I sort of took it personally for the last 50 years. And when I decided that was my goal in life, it was because there was no collection like this anywhere,” Scott said.
The collection is more than a bragging right for the university, Instruction and Outreach Librarian Ruth Ann Jones has used the books to teach her students.
Jones likes to incorporate comic books in her lessons because they allow for many different voices to be heard.
“We have a huge collection of LGBTQ+ comics. We have comics by many different creators of color. So comics are not just entertainment," Jones said. "They are a very diverse expression of many different voices."
