EAST LANSING, MI — Before visiting Michigan State University’s massive comic book collection, I asked librarian Jason Larsen to set aside what he considers the five rarest or quirkiest items. Not the most valuable or the oldest, but the pieces he’s most excited to show others who share his abiding passion for the form.
Perhaps not an easy task when you’re the curator of the largest publicly accessible comics cache on the planet, but Larsen was game for the challenge.
Meeting him Aug. 5 at the campus library, his enthusiasm was palpable. It’s something I expected from a guy who has melded his lifelong hobby with his academic education and parleyed them into a unique profession.
Following a tour of the library’s stacks, Larsen ushered me and a photographer into a reading room, in which four comics were laid out on plastic cradles. The most recent was published nearly two decades before I was born. Each was in excellent condition (at least to this layman’s eyes), the colors’ vividness jumping from the covers, the pages still crisp.
The fifth item was no comic, but a letter authored by one of, if not the, best-known writers in the superhero genre.
Without further ado, let’s nerd out with some arcane comic lore.
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Five rare items at Michigan State University’s massive comics collectionCole Waterman
1. ‘Star Ranger’
“Star Ranger,” published February 1937, sold for 10¢.
“It’s the first U.S. Western comic book,” Larsen said. “The condition of this thing is insane. There’s a little bit of damage, but for 1937, it’s really impressive. Comics as a medium were barely out of the gate.”
In addition to stereotypical gunslinger and rustler stories, there’s advertisements for Butterfinger and Baby Ruth candy bars, hyping the “energizing ingredient” of Dextrose. There are also one-pagers giving historical summaries of Western figures like Jesse James and Sitting Bull.
An original All Star Comics issue that was the debut of “Wonder Woman” is housed as a prize possession inside of the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections at the Michigan State University library on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025, in East Lansing, Michigan. Starting with a few thousand issues in 1970, the collection has grown to more than a quarter-million.(Devin Anderson-Torrez | MLive.com)2. Wonder Woman’s first appearance
“All Star Comics No. 8,” published October 1941, sold for 10¢.
While the bulk of the comic contains adventures of the Justice Society of America, a short story in the back introduces Wonder Woman, marking her first appearance.
“This is a big one,” said Larsen, describing Wonder Woman as one of the Trinity characters, alongside Superman and Batman.
“It was a nine-page origin story and she joins the Justice Society by the end as their secretary, because it’s 1941, and then obviously, as a full-time member. This is a huge moment in history. Wonder Woman is an ideal that has leapt beyond the page and it started here.”
The comic was only acquired by the library in December 2024.
“It Rhymes With Lust,” published in 1950, is the world’s first graphic novel. It is contained in Michigan State University’s collection of 350,000 comic books.Cole Waterman3. The first graphic novel
“It Rhymes with Lust,“ published 1950, sold for 25¢.
A pulpy, film noir-inspired detective novel, told with artist Matt Baker’s black-and-white illustrations, debuting what would come to be known as the “graphic novel.”
Adding to its allure, Baker was one of the few Black and gay artists of comics’ Golden Age, Larsen said.
“This was meant for large, mass markets, this was not meant for kids,” he said of the book’s iconoclasm. “It didn’t take off in the book market because people didn’t know what to do with it. It was way ahead of its time. It’s a piece of comics history that forever changed the medium.”
“The Butterfly” is the first appearance of a Black female superhero in comics, it appeared in an issue of Hell-Rider that is housed inside of the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections at the Michigan State University library on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025, in East Lansing, Michigan. (Devin Anderson-Torrez | MLive.com)4. The first Black female superhero
“Hell-Rider,” published August 1971, sold for 60¢.
Technically more horror noir magazine than comic book (a loophole through which underground publishers could avoid the censorship-prone Comics Code Authority), the issue features several black-and-white stories, but what makes it stand out is its introduction of The Butterfly. Not a household name by any stretch, but she is the first Black female superhero.
“It broke new ground that a Black female superhero existed and it got under the censor lines,” Larsen said.
Butterfly debuted two years before Marvel introduced their first Black female hero, Misty Knight, and four years before they unveiled Storm, the weather-manipulating Kenyan mutant goddess and staple member of the X-Men.
A letter from Stan Lee speaking on the “Fantastic Four” comics is kept inside of the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections at the Michigan State University library on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025, in East Lansing, Michigan.(Devin Anderson-Torrez | MLive.com)5. A hand-signed letter from Stan Lee
Alongside artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Stan “The Man” Lee co-created Marvel Comics luminaries Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Thor, Iron Man, Daredevil, and the Silver Surfer.
Working on his thesis on “the construction of good and evil in The Fantastic Four,” David Lippert wrote to Lee to ask about his literary influences in creating Marvel’s First Family, in particular asking if John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost was a touchstone.
Lee’s trademark dry wit and graciousness come through his one-page response, in which he dispels the notion he was shooting for grand literature.
“I’m very flattered by your analysis,” Lee wrote to Lippert in February 1991, “because I’ve long believed that any form of good writing will give the reader far more than the writer intended.”
How to see these and other items in the collection
As MSU’s comics collection is land-grant funded, it is accessible to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.
“This is a community resource,” Larsen said. “We want people to know they can come and look at the comics, and you don’t have to be a scholar. If you just want to come in and read the first appearance of Black Panther, you can do that.”
If you’d like to examine these or the approximately 350,000 other items in MSU’s collection, you must register online and request the comics you’d like to access, preferably at least three days prior to your planned visit. Library staff set the comics in cradles in a reading room, instruct visitors on the best ways to handle the historic documents, and provide them with a page-turning spatula.
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