Bill Blackbeard was the the Founder and Director of the San Francisco Academy of Comics Art. What was that? Basically, it was a way for Bill Blackbeard to save old newspaper strips.
People were throwing them out, along with the old newspapers they were in. Libraries and other institutions were throwing them out. Bill saw the clear and present danger that the day would come when there would be no copies available of the classic strips…at least not in a location and condition that would be of any use to anyone. He loved that work and didn't want to see it vanish off the face of the planet…so he did what he did. Today, many wonderful comic strips are available and reprintable only because he did what he did.
Bill died March 10 in a Northern California nursing home, only a few weeks before what would have been his 85th birthday. R.C. Harvey has a longer, better obit than I am qualified to write. So does Jeet Heer. So does Tom Spurgeon.