The Legacy of Dr. Jerry Bails

 

Dr. Jerry Bails was one of the architects of comics fandom. In the 1960s, he and Roy Thomas were publishing influential fanzines that grew fandom from s small mustard seed. The Comic Reader, for example, was an archetypal fanzine that sprung from the mind of Jerry Bails. (A collection of these early fanzines has been published and is available over here.)

As the 1970s dawned, Dr. Bails moved on to a grander project. He dubbed it The Who's Who of American Comics, a four-volume magazine-sized database of all the comics creators. I bought my copies through the mail directly from Dr. Bails back in those 1970s (and we wrote a complimentary note to each other in our correspondence, but I forget the exact contents of those).

Maybe you're waiting for the other show to drop and are anticipating me telling you where you can purchase the Who's Who volumes? But no! The news is even better than that! Dr. Bails wanted these volumes to be his legacy and available to all, so they are posted online for everyone to access at no charge. Such a nice man. Investigate the database for yourself right over here (click the Reset button in the upper right corner of that page and you will be ready to type in the name of any American comic book creator who was active between 1928 and 1999). Have some fun with it! All thanks to Dr. Jerry Bails!