EAST LANSING, MI — Say you’re an academic researching the Golden Age of Comics and want to peruse some of the earliest iterations of the medium. Or maybe you’re a hobbyist, just looking to fulfill a dream of holding the first appearance of an iconic character like the Silver Surfer.

Either way, you’re in luck, as Michigan State University houses the largest publicly accessible comic book collection in the world. Starting with a few thousand issues in 1970, the collection within the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections has grown to more than a quarter-million.

“It’s one of the best kept secrets in the state,” said Jason Larsen, comics studies librarian, of the land-grant, taxpayer-funded cache of comics. “It’s a special academic collection, but it’s also for the communit

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