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Randy Scott shows off a book of comics in his basement office where Michigan State University Libraries' Comic Art Collection, the largest library collection of comic books in the world, is stored.

(Photo by Marina Csomor | For MLive.com)

EAST LANSING, MI -- Randy Scott has read his fair share of chapter books and still enjoys literature without picture-filled pages.

But growing up, he was a comics kid.

“I read comics all the time,” Scott said. “I was probably one of those people who can say I learned to read with comics, and I learned a lot of stuff that I think I know from comics — you know, ‘Batman told me that, it must be true.’”

Today, Scott is in charge of Michigan State University Libraries’ Comic Art Collection. With about 250,000 items, it is the largest library comic book collection in the world.

The Comic Art Collection is housed on shelves and in boxes in the basement of MSU’s Main Library, 366 W. Circle Drive in East Lansing, along with the libraries’ other special collections. Its colorful comics can only be read in the special collections’ reading room, which consists of just 18 chairs for interested individuals to occupy.

Although the Comic Art Collection is a researcher’s delight, many local comic book fans don’t realize this trove exists, said Ray Walsh, owner of Curious Book Shop, 307 E. Grand River Ave. in East Lansing.

“I think it’s kind of Michigan State University's best kept secret in a way,” Walsh said.

Most people who visit the Comic Art Collection are serious scholars from all over the world working on comic-related books or dissertations or thesis papers. But some recreational readers, including Laingsburg resident Ed Gildner, an MSU Libraries employee who also volunteers in the Comic Art Collection, enjoy the diverse selection of comic books the university has to offer.

“I would just stay after work and read comics,” Gildner said. “I would work through like a whole group. I read a whole thing of ‘(The Adventures of ) Tintin.’ It’s the Belgian comics. So I read all of those over the course of a couple weeks — just stuff that I couldn't get my hand on otherwise.”

As the libraries’ assistant head of special collections, Scott supervises more than the Comic Art Collection. But his favorite part of the job is acting as the libraries’ resident comic art bibliographer, spending time cataloging and acquiring comics for the collection — about 90 percent of the collection is donated, but he gets a small budget every year to use for purchasing additional comic books.

Scott works to obtain everything from the most popular comic books chronicling the lives of famed superheroes to obscure comics produced in limited numbers by small publishers simply on Xerox machines.

MSU’s collection of material has the widest scope. Its comics hail not only from the U.S. but from countries as far away as France, Argentina and India.

“I want to cover everything,” Scott said. “I want people who study comics not to have any excuse for missing something. I want to be able to say, ‘Well, you missed that, and here it is.'”

Walsh at Curious Book Shop hired Scott as his first employee, before Scott began work at the university’s libraries. Walsh said Scott is too humble to admit his own accolades, but he is a scholar in the field of comics.

“He’s so knowledgeable about the material, and he’s easy to get along with,” Walsh said. “He knows more about comics and the publication of them than probably anybody else in the country, but I would say it hasn’t gone to his head.”

The Comic Art Collection has been growing since it was started in 1970 by MSU professor Russel Nye, who at the time was interested in studying popular culture. Scott began working at MSU Libraries as a preorder typist in 1971 and by 1974 was volunteering to help catalog the Comic Art Collection in his spare time. Eventually, Scott was appointed a permanent position working with this special comics collection.

For Scott, working every day with comics is a dream job he never imagined he would hold.

“I have this nostalgic thing,” Scott said. “It’s a literary form that I grew up with and always appreciated, and when I realized after I got to be a college student that not everybody felt that way, I realized, ‘Well, why not?’ Then I realized the libraries didn’t have any — ‘Well, why not?’ And I thought, ‘There’s a cause!’ Something where I can perhaps make a difference. And so I just decided, ‘Hey, comics are my thing.’”

Follow Marina Csomor on Twitter: @MarinaCsomor. Email her at marinacsomor@gmail.com.