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Comic-Con International, the comics industry's biggest event for both fans and professionals, takes over San Diego this week, including panels and presentations on everything from popular genre television like HBO's Game of Thrones to politics in comics to histories of the form. And, yes, lots of people dressed up like Captain America. To celebrate Comic-Con, guest blogger Allan Holtz, author of American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide, offers his thoughts on preserving early newspaper comic strips.

One of the questions I get asked a lot by collectors and comic strip fans is "How should I store my newspaper comic strips?" I'm going to endeavor to answer that question as best I can, but first a caveat. Although I have a large collection and I do my best to store the material so that it will not deteriorate, I am admittedly not a professional archivist. Some of what I do might well make a serious preservationist give me the ol' "tsk, tsk". I don't want to give the impression that I'm expounding on anything more scientific than my own philosophy of newspaper storage, but I will make mention on points where I know that my methods are less than optimal.

The basic answer to the newspaper storage question is quite simple. All newspaper should be stored with three basic elements in mind:

• Cool
• Dry
• Dark

Heat, humidity and light are the enemies of newsprint. High temperatures and high humidity accelerate the aging of the paper, first turning it off-white, then eventually brown and then brittle. The first two factors, though, are lightweights compared to the aging power of light. Light can turn newsprint brown and brittle in practically no time. If you find that hard to believe, leave your daily newspaper out in the sun for a few days. Even that much exposure is enough to start the yellowing process. Give it a few weeks and you'll have a newspaper that looks like George Hamilton after a month on Waikiki beach.

In addition to keeping your newspaper out of light, you should also avoid storing it in places that have high heat or humidity. Newsprint that is stored in the temperature extremes of an attic will just as surely turn brown and brittle as if it were sitting in the sun, albeit at a much slower pace. The humidity of basements not only age paper quickly, but also stimulates growth of mold, which considers damp newsprint a gourmet delicacy. Mold, needless to say, is definitely on our enemies list.

For temperature and humidity, the best place to keep your newspaper comic strips is in the same environment that you prefer to live. Moderate temperature and humidity do not halt the aging process, but they do make it about as slow as is practical for the fan and collector. Assuming you don't have the facility or wherewithal to keep the material in an ideal environment (which is more like 50 degrees F and about 40-50% humidity), the living areas of your home will do just fine. The only other requirement, then, is to keep them out of the light, and a closet, cupboard or closed box work fine.

In addition to minding the 'big three' factors, there is one more thing you can do to help your newspaper keep its youthful complexion. Newsprint that is kept away from circulating air ages far slower. The less exposure to moving air the better. If you look at an old book printed on cheap pulp paper, you'll notice that the outer page edges are much browner than the page bodies. The difference seems to be that the middles of the pages weren't exposed to air. In a tightly closed book, everything except the page edges gets no air circulation – apparently, then, this is an environment hostile to the agents of paper deterioration.

So to give your newspapers an even longer life you can eliminate, or at least limit, the amount of air circulation to which they are exposed. The basic way to do this is simplicity itself - just stack your newspaper tearsheets in a pile. This protects them almost as if they were bound like a book.

You can go one better than the 'book' method of storage, which still leaves the outer edges exposed to air, by tightly bagging your newspapers to eliminate the air circulation all but completely. But once you consider bagging your newspapers, you hit the $64,000 question - which materials are suitable? If the bagging material reacts chemically with the newspaper, you can cause much more harm to your precious collection than you are trying to avoid in the first place.

Archivists tell us that the ideal material for bagging newsprint is Mylar. We are told that it is totally chemically inert and thus cannot react with the contents. I don't doubt that they are right. There's just one little problem - the stuff costs an arm and a leg. I suppose if you are trying to protect some rare and valuable 1890s Yellow Kid page that it is perfectly reasonable to shell out the big bucks for Mylar. But 99.9% of newspaper comics are simply not worth that kind of investment. They're scarce, yes, even rare, but valuable ... not so much.

Instead I prefer to use good old reliable polyethylene plastic bags. They cost mere pennies per bag and come in a practically infinite variety of sizes. Now, I've read the reports that claim the plastic 'outgasses' nasty chemicals that will supposedly destroy my precious collection (mostly from companies selling Mylar ... hmmm), but I can only tell you what I have learned from personal experience. I have plenty of newspapers that I placed in polyethylene bags as long as thirty years ago, and to my eyes the paper inside has not aged one bit in that period.

So in a nutshell, that’s my recommendation for storage. But I should say a few words about other storage methods that you should definitely avoid. First of all, don't paste or tape your comic strips into albums. The glue that comes in contact with the newspaper will usually turn it brown. Besides, if and when you decide to sell your comic strips you'll find that most collectors won't buy strips that have tape or glue on them. Same goes for laminating - most collectors want nothing to do with laminated newspapers, and rightly so. Lamination is irreversible and studies have shown that it does practically nothing to protect newsprint – the paper continues to age unabated inside that plastic film.

It's also a bad idea to put your comic strips in those photo albums with the sticky clear plastic overlays. The newsprint reacts chemically with those album pages, and eventually becomes stuck fast, just as if you’d used glue.

It is also a bad idea to store un-bagged comic strips in cardboard boxes. Most cardboard is highly acidic, so much so that it can chemically burn paper that touches it. Cardboard is fine if the strips are bagged, or if the cardboard is lined with some inert material, like polyethylene.

For much more information about storing newspaper, including tips on bagging, fabricating boxes, and tracking your collection, you can read the complete series about storage on my website, Stripper’s Guide:

http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-i-store-comic-strips-part-i.html

American Newspaper Comics is available now.