This issue’s Gallery section featured several pages with high-quality photos of the Words and Pictures Museum of Fine Sequential Art in Northampton, Massachusetts, opened and owned by one Kevin Eastman, who is, not coincidentally, the publisher of Heavy Metal. When I read this issue in 1995, I had an overwhelming desire to visit this museum. The photos are beautiful and that gift shop (above) looks amazing.

The website for the museum indicates that it has become a virtual museum as of 1999, which is too bad as I never got the chance to visit. Oh well. 

The name itself feels like it covered a lot of bases, though – Fine Sequential Art sounds like it wanted to be a fine arts museum (a laudable goal) but it had to shoehorn the sequential bit in there somewhere, despite the fact that it’s got words and pictures in the name already.

(Heavy Metal issue #156, May 1995 – Page 7 Gallery: Words and Pictures Museum of Fine Sequential Art)

Addendum: Howard Jurofsky told me that the magazine paid to sustain this museum and that the lack of that money led directly to him leaving the magazine in 2012.