Ménage Á Pop is a three times a week intimate discussion between two people and a piece of pop culture.
While Saturday morning had some great cartoons, Sunday had all the best comic strips. Garfield. The Far Side. Calvin And Hobbes. But buried somewhere beneath those panels was a far more secret history of sequential art. One that an intrepid Rick Brooks sought to uncover. And this six year old's archeological dig managed to unearth a vital artifact in the form of the vastly over-sized archive, The Smithsonian Collection Of Newspaper Comics.
Rick Brooks is co-host of BATTLE OF THE NETWORK SHOWS, a weekly podcast that explores TV through the 70s and 80s. Its newest season begins this Thursday, September 24th and can be heard on APPLE PODCASTS, STITCHER and the homepage of www.battleofthenetworkshows.com.
POP NOTES
The SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION OF NEWSPAPER COMICS was first published by the Smithsonian Institute in 1977. Its organization and accompanying text was authored by comic historians Bill Blackbeard and Martin T. Williams.
Bill Blackbeard founded the non-profit San Francisco Academy Of Comic Art in 1968 as a library to previously discarded newspapers and their comic pages. After 29 years, the building’s owner declined to renew the lease and, in January 1998, the 75 tons of printed material was relocated to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum located at Ohio State.
In 2001 Bill Blackbeard published DOUBLE FOLD: LIBRARIES AND THE ASSAULT ON PAPER, an expose on how libraries and government institutions destruction of printed materials (books and newspapers) has also erased aspects of cultural heritage.
The Smithsonian Institute was founded on August 10th, 1846 at first as a research center and soon thereafter as a manner to display for various Government collections to the public. Its initially funded following the passing of Henry James Hungerford by the sizable inheritance left to him by his uncle, British scientist James Smithsonian.
Tune back on Monday when GIULIE SPEZIANI, comic book author and co-host of the ILLITERATE AGENTS podcast puts a Cranberries song back in your head that it just took 29 years to get out .
This episode of MÉNAGE Á POP was recorded by CAST, an online audio platform that lets you create and record a multi-guest podcast straight from your web-browser. It was then mastered by AUPHONIC, a web-based post-production service. Check out both sights for trial and subscription information.
MUSIC FEATURED IN TODAY’S EPISODE:
“Three Ways To Do That” (opening theme) composed and performed by The Madeline Prior. All rights reserved with Not A Holograms podcasts.
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Try to understand the present while living in the past with Tim’s weekly podcast 20TH CENTURY POP! at www.nahpods.com/20popcast
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