Over the weekend I had the opportunity to see Comics at Columbia: Past, Present and Future, a fascinating exhibit of art and memorabilia on display in the rare book rooms of Butler Library at Columbia University.  Curated by Columbia’s graphic novels librarian Karen Green, the show offers a glimpse of some of the historical items in the University’s growing graphic literature collection and exemplifies how deeply the medium of comics has now penetrated the consciousness of academia and high culture.
 
The exhibit features hundreds of items including original artwork, letters, scripts, newspaper tear sheets and photos.  Green opted against presenting the materials in chronological order.  Instead, the displays leap across various themes that circle around the definition of comics, arriving eventually at its creative core.
 
Comics from the outside in.  The first bank of exhibits features “comics-adjacent” media, ranging from the woodcut picture novels of Lynd Ward from the 1920s and 30s to archival editorial cartoons to graphic editions of classic works such as Peter Kuper’s Kafka.  By setting the context in this way, Green establishes comics within an accepted tradition of illustrated literature.
 
This kind of throat-clearing used to be required when presenting comics in a museum setting.  These days comics generally don’t need to be grandfathered into respectability.  However, when you are mounting an exhibit in the main library of Columbia University – pretty much the institutional center of the American literary/academic complex, to the extent such a thing still exists any more – it probably doesn't hurt.  Plus, the works are interesting and seldom seen.
 
Close to home.  From there, we move on to works that reflect on connections between comics and Columbia University itself: Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoons (the Columbia School of Journalism awards the Pulitzer Prize); lecture notes of one-time student Jerry Robinson, who decorated his chemistry homework with portraits of Batman and Robin; a letter from the dean informing future Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston of his appointment to the faculty in the late 1920s; and even a copy of Daredevil #168, where Frank Miller used Columbia’s campus as the backdrop to the first meeting between Matt Murdoch and Elektra.
 
Everything including the Kitchen Sink.  The next part of the show delves into the archives of artist, publisher and agent Denis Kitchen, whose papers were acquired by Columbia in 2013.  This includes private correspondence between Kitchen and three of the legendary comics figures most closely associated with his enterprise: Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman and Robert Crumb.  The notes are accompanied by illustrations, page comps and preliminaries for work that later graced the covers of Kitchen Sink publications.
 
Some of the most interesting and amusing items from the Kitchen archives are letters between Kitchen and Stan Lee from the early 1970s heyday of underground comix.  In one letter, Lee emphatically rejected Kitchen’s request to publish an authorized underground spoof of Spider-Man.  Try it and “we’ll sue the hell out of you,” offered Smiley Stan.  “But think of the great newspaper headlines!”  In another, Lee lamented that Marvel’s artists lacked the freedom of the undergrounds.  In a third exchange, both Lee and Kitchen seemed to toy with the idea of Kitchen working for Marvel.  It is amusing to consider the alternate timeline of comics history in which that actually happened!
 
The exhibit featured some of the other recent bequests to the Columbia archive, including Al Jaffee's process sketches and preliminaries for his famous fold-ins, as well as scripts and other writings from Chris Claremont.  One was a page of Claremont’s notes taken on a sheet of paper bearing the letterhead of the first ICv2 conference in 1992!
 
For the love of comics.  The last part of the show explored the complex connection between comics and fans, as shown through items donated by Elfquest creators Wendy and Richard Pini.  There’s the issue of Silver Surfer that printed a fan letter from Wendy Fletcher, which brought her to the attention of Richard Pini (and hundreds of other like-minded male fans, apparently).  There’s correspondence between Pini and artist Frank Thorne from the era in which Wendy Pini appeared at conventions in the costume of Red Sonja (which Thorne was famously drawing at the time).  And yes, you can actually see Pini’s itsy-bitsy teeny weeny chain mail bikini in all its glory in the exhibit.
 
Later works show Pini’s artistic development with Elfquest as the strip progressed from underground to mainstream success.  But curator Green saved the best for last, concluding the Comics at Columbia exhibit with the original art from a complete six page story that Pini did in the late 1990s, chronicling her relationship to the Elfquest characters and fans, and the effect that they have had on her own life and legacy.
 
The strip is a tear-jerker: at once a thoughtful meditation on the power of comic storytelling to capture our imaginations, and a powerful example in itself of how they can engage our emotions.  It is both a stirring conclusion and a microcosm of the Comics at Columbia show.
 
If you’re a fan of the art, history or business of comics and will be in the New York area, you should make the trip uptown to catch this remarkable exhibit.  It will be running through January 23, 2015.
 
--Rob Salkowitz (@robsalk) is author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture.
 
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com