Curatorial assistant Kylee Green showcases some eye-opening comics and scrapbooks of optometric interest from the Hofstetter Collection!
These scrapbooks don’t contain family photos or memorabilia. Instead, they contain cartoons about optometry from the years 1900-1993. Well, most are about optometry, some are just about eyes. This collection was put together by Henry W. Hofstetter, who was IU’s first president of the optometry school (“Hofstetter Collection”; Casser 43-45).
Hofstetter began collecting cartoons in the 40s with 75 cartoons photographed to be projected at conferences. The collection now spans 65 scrapbooks across 13 boxes. Because of the large breadth of this collection, I am focusing on the first box of Hofstetter’s collection. Box 1 contains 4 scrapbooks categorized by years. They cover 1900-1947.
Hofstetter was a child of immigrants from a large family. He was always known to be neat and organized in comparison to other children his age (Moore; Goss). His love of organization likely contributed to his desire to document the comics in scrapbooks. However, the scrapbooks themselves don’t have an organization, outside of the years on the front. Some pages are more organized or aesthetically pleasing than others. Some will have one large comic that takes up the page, and others will have many smaller comics with no unifying color or style. A reason for this may be that Hofstetter was not collecting alone. He asked conference attendees to send him anything he could add to his collection. He did not keep track of all of the donors but lists Thomas E. Eichhorst as a significant contributor to the collection.
The comics range widely. Some are newspaper clippings, and some are photocopies. The comics aren’t labeled, likely because they were collected by many different people. Many could be recognizable to the general public or those in comics studies, such as Nancy or Krazy Kat. A rare few aren’t cartoons at all, leading to an odd combination of kitsch and fine art.
One that stood out to me depicts a girl wandering in front of an optician’s office. Her world is incredibly detailed, looking more like a charcoal piece than a cartoon. Shop signs descend the street behind her, many with legible text despite their recession into the frame. Masculine figures stand in the background, but something feels off about them. One appears to be walking with crutches, and the other’s posture looks uncomfortably stiff, like he’s hanging. There’s a beggar just to the left of the girl with hollow eyes. One of the only labels I’ve seen has been cut and pasted on the bottom: “EYES TESTED” (1944). No attention is drawn to it. It is simply pasted among newspaper gags about the Snellen Chart. This is a Chinese ink and watercolor piece by artist Reginald Marsh, but the organization, or lack thereof, puts it on equal footing to the comics around it (“Reginald Marsh”). High and low art are on the same playing field. Only in this collection would you have Eyes Tested (1944) in the same box as a Napoleon strip where the dog learns to read.
Over time, the stickiness of the scrapbooks has worn off (Buchanan-Cates). On certain pages, comics overlap, making some of them illegible. Cartoons sometimes poke out of the plastic and near the spiral spine. It makes for a very interesting contrast. The pages Hostetter put
together feel informational. These are the comics. Here, they are standing next to each other. The comics moved by the years feel collage-like. Like time itself is making a statement.
Hofstetter’s collection is an early example of using comics to get people more engaged in learning. Comics have been used in classrooms for decades. An early study from 1949 already found them to be a useful teaching skill for K-12 kids (Hutchinson 236–45). More modern studies, like this one from 2011, have found that they can be a successful learning tool when teaching science to students outside of their field (Hosler and Boomer 309–17). The community participation that led to the creation of this project is an excellent example of how art, then and now, can bring people together to learn and connect. And isn’t that really what scrapbooking is all about?
Bibliography
Buchanan-Cates, Eva H. “Scrapbooks: Troublemakers and Treasures in the Archives.”
September 29, 2017. https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/scrapbookstroublemakers-and-treasures-archives.
Casser, Linda. “A Tribute to Henry W Hofstetter, OD, PhD, FAAO: Recollections from
Students.” Hindsight: Journal of Optometry History 50, no. 2 (2019): 43–45.
https://doi.org/10.14434/hindsight.v50i2.26592.
Goss, David A. “OHS Co-Founder Henry W Hofstetter (1914-2002).” Hindsight: Journal of
Optometry History 50, no. 2 (2019): 29–34.
https://doi.org/10.14434/hindsight.v50i2.26589.
“Hofstetter Collection of Cartoons of Optometric Interest, ca. 1900-1993.”
https://iucat.iu.edu/lilly/12429054.
Hosler, Jay, and K. B. Boomer. “Are Comic Books an Effective Way to Engage Nonmajors in
Learning and Appreciating Science” CBE Life Sciences Education 10, no. 3 (2011):
309–17. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.10-07-0090.
Hutchinson, Katharine H. “An Experiment in the Use of Comics as Instructional Material.”
The Journal of Educational Sociology 23, no. 4 (1949): 236–45.
https://doi.org/10.2307/2264559.
Moore, Dave. “Dr. Henry Hofstetter – Class of 1939 – Notable Alumnus | 100 Years of Great
Vision!” The Ohio State University. Accessed November 6, 2025.
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