By Dan Brown

I’ve got a dream I want to share with you.

In fact, I would love it if you – or anyone else reading this column – stole my crazy notion and found a way to make it a reality. This is one of those times when I won’t mind if somebody rips me off.

My dream: A centre for the study of comics. Here in London.

If you have a minute, I’ll flesh out the details.

What I’m talking about is a place where comic fans, comic creators and the professionals who study comics could all gather to share their love for the medium.

And there’s no better place to put it than here in London, Ontario, Canada.

For starters, we have the infrastructure that would be necessary.

We’ve got a university. We’ve got a college.

Western University on its own has a massive and growing collection of rare comics, including copies of the so-called “Canadian Whites,” which were homegrown superhero tales that flourished during the Second World War.

Along with those schools, we have the people who chronicle the comic industry, like former Brescia University College professor Dominick Grace. Grace has co-edited an encyclopedic series of books that collect interviews with influential figures in the industry from Seth to Jim Shooter.

We’ve also got the comic stores.

L.A. Mood Comics & Games. Heroes. Neo Tokyo. These specialty shops support the city’s fans and sponsor such events as Forest City Comicon and London Comic Con, Free Comic Book Day, plus many other happenings like in-store signings.

London has a regular calendar of events that includes Tingfest, the festival of graphica celebrating the work of the late Merle Tingley (the legendary editorial cartoonist for the London Free Press), as well as the artists of today who are following in his footsteps.

In case you haven’t noticed, Southwestern Ontario is also a hotbed of comic talent.

This area has played a key role in the career of many creators, including Jeff Lemire, Seth, Bryan Lee O’Malley, A. Jaye and Alison Williams and Diana Tamblyn (who also founded Tingfest).

We have benefactors of the industry like Eddy Smet.

Smet, who established London’s first store for comics, the Comic Book Collector, has been generating headlines in recent years for donating literally thousands of individual comics to Western’s libraries.

What would such a centre look like?

It could be a joint venture between Western and Fanshawe. It could be partly modelled after trade schools like the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction in Vermont.

Fanshawe has shown great leadership with placing one of its campuses downtown, so maybe there’s a spot in the core where the centre could be located.

This new institution would have regular programming featuring guest lecturers, special screenings of comic-connected movies, question-and-answer forums with creators and also workshops, as well as anything else that would support the comic and graphic novel industry by inspiring young people to seek careers as artists or writers.

So how about it, London? Is there anyone out there who would like to poach this pipe dream of mine?

It’s a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself, so somebody please make it happen.

As your humble graphic-novel columnist, I’m just one comic fan. I can only do so much. But I’ve done the hardest part: I’ve provided the vision.

Now it’s up to someone else to bring this one home.

Because if it doesn’t happen in London, it ain’t happening anywhere. We are the perfect location for this venture.

All I ask is an invitation to the official opening, when the time comes!

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 31 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.