Global Comics Collection

The Global Comics Collection (formerly known as the East Asia Comics Collection) has grown over the last decade and now houses over 1,000 books. Originating from a small initial gift to the Japanese studies collection to build a robust resource for language learners, scholars of popular culture, and general readers. The collection now includes  Korean manhwa (만화),  Japanese manga (漫画),  Chinese manhua (漫畫/漫画), and comics in Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi, French, Ukrainian, Bengali, Tamil, Italian, Armenian, Czech, Malayalam, and Marathi with more to come. Formerly, the purchasing strategy was partly based on student requests, (and resulted in our acquiring Japanese popular series such as Jūhan shuttai! (重版出来!) and Sikkaek (食客)). Now that we have expanded to include many languages, we are working closely with our partners around the globe to source popular comics. We welcome suggestions!

The Japanese comic collection especially focused on collecting LGBTQ+ stories from Japan. The Penn Libraries was one of the first in North America to purchase the now-popular Japanese series Otōto no otto (弟の夫) by gay artist Tagame Gengoroh (田亀源五郎), which has since been translated to English as My Brother’s Husband and was serialized as a six-episode drama by Japanese broadcaster NHK in 2018. (In fact, we own many TV shows and movie versions of the comics in our collection.) 

All patrons should feel welcome to either read comics from the collection in the library or check them out to take home.