About Comics – About Comics

Cross Word Craze: Classic Crosswords of the 1920

Compiled by Nat Gertler

This delightful book is filled with crossword puzzles from the 1920s, plus articles, cartoons, and more on the topic of crosswords from the newspapers of the day.

In the 1920s, crosswords were everywhere. At the start of the decade, the “cross-word puzzle” was an obscure feature to be found in a handful of America’s newspapers. By 1924, they were a craze, the fad of the moment that was celebrated by many and decried by scolds. They were a driving force for public events and fashion, a cause for skyrocketing dictionary sales, and a significant driver of newspapers subscriptions. The first crossword puzzle books were published, and there were novels, plays, and songs on the topic. The crossword earned its permanent place in the culture during this time, This book was crafted from the archives of over 100 newspapers, not just from the 48 states that were in the U.S. at that point, but also from the English-speaking world beyond. Enclosed you will find: 100 puzzles with solutions – not just the standard daily newspaper puzzles of the time, but puzzles created for contests, puzzles created in contests, advertising puzzles. There are puzzles ranging from little illustrated ones for children to a 32-by-32 square behemoth with hundreds of words. There are puzzles meant for everyone, and ones meant for such special audiences as the Latin student or the radio addict. 100 newspapers clippings – articles, cartoons, advertisements, and more from the time, all reflecting the crossword craze of the day.
Is this a puzzle book? Is it a history scrapbook? It’s both, with plenty for the history buff and the puzzle fan alike! A great gift for the puzzle fan in your life… even if that fan is yourself.

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996891
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996890
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 11 inches, 128 pages

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Drift Marlo: The Space Race Comic Strip

Written by Phil Evans, drawn by Tom Cook, space consulting by I. M. Levitt

It’s 1961, and as human beings are reaching space for the first time, Drift Marlo sets down in America’s newspapers. Billed as the first authentic space adventure series, it is not filled with tales of galactic princesses and brutish Martians, but with tales of a space program just a few years more advanced than where we were then, grounded in the science, the goals, and the politics of the times.
Drift Marlo is head of security for America’s space base, charged with protecting the brave astronauts, dedicated scientists, and vital mission. He handles situations from dealing with protestors to sniffing out saboteurs. But this detective is also a mystery, with a past so obscure that even he doesn’t know what it is.
Collected here for the first time are the first four Drift Marlo adventures, built up over hundreds of individual daily newspaper strips

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996883
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996883
Format ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 6 inches, 124 pages, black and white.

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To Be Announced

In the mid-1980s, award-winning graphic novel writer Derek McCulloch (Stagger Lee, Gone to Amerikay) teamed with beloved cartoonist Mike Bannon (Oombah, Jungle Moon Man; “Old Paper”) to take on that most sacred of sacred cows: television! Decades later, we can now look back on the work that delivered the final, deadly blow to TV and saved generations from its influence.
This collects the stories from all seven issues of the original To Be Announced! comic book, including everything from Sesame Street Blues to the fundraising concert Lemon-Aid.

This book is being released as part of an effort to contact artist Mike Bannon, who has been out of touch with his comics pals and collaborators for well over a decade. Mike, if you’re out there, we want to hear from you!

2022 PopCult Gift Guide selection, Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette-Mail

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996514
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996517
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 10 inches, 160 pages, black and white

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Teddy Roosevelt: His Career in Cartoons

Teddy Roosevelt: His Career in Cartoons by Albert Shaw with Nat Gertler

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, is a larger-than-life figure. He wasn’t just a politician, he was also a warrior, an explorer, a naturalist, and a power broker. He also thrived during a period when editorial cartooning was a major, often front-page part of the political discussion. Now About Comics has released Teddy Roosevelt: His Career in Cartoons, a biography filled with over 600 relevant political cartoons from the era.
This volume uses as a base the 1910 book A Cartoon History of Roosevelt’s Career by professor-turned-journalist Albert Shaw, and then expands on it, adding over 50 additional cartoons chroncling the period after that original publication and Roosevelt’s 1919 death. The expansion’s cartoons were selected by Nat Gertler (an Eisner Award winner for his writing about comics), who also supplied additional text to tell the story of Roosevelt during this period and to give the cartoons context.
Roosevelt had been in the public eye well before he became President. He’d been a president of the New York City police board, governor of New York, an assistant secretary of the US Narvy, a Rough Rider, and a vice-president. The earliest cartoons in the book are from 1884, when he was a member of the New York State Assembly.
This volume includes cartoons from a wide array of sources, both in the US and abroad, making the book an effective depiction of the range of styles that cartoonists wielded. Perhaps more significantly, it demonstrates the many angles of interpretation; an editorial cartoon is not supposed to be neutral, and so the various artists get to show Roosevelt as a hero, a scoundrel, a madman, a statesman, an impediment, an inspiration, and so forth

282 pages
black-and-white
gloss, 80# paper
7.44 x 9.68 in
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-949996-84-5
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-949996-83-8

Not available through Amazon, but you can order the paperback or hardcover through Lulu.com!

(Note: This title does not mix-and-match with other titles for wholesale shipping deals.)

An Altar Boy Named ‘Speck’: The Collection Compilation

Speck is a well-intentioned, spirited, energetic, and often all-too-human boy of the cloth, there to serve, to support, and when possible, to mooch your sweet snacks.

Tut LeBlanc was a talented cartoonist who created Speck for a single, local paper, not realizing at the time that his creation would go national and outlive him by decades. Begun in 1951 during the Catholic cartoon explosion, ‘Speck’ held a special place in a world otherwise filled with Sisters, Fathers, and Brothers.

This volume collects all the cartoons from both of the original two books of Tut LeBlanc’s work: An Altar Boy Named ‘Speck’ and ‘Speck’: More Cartoons. (Also available: Speck the Altar Boy: The Collection Compilation, collecting two books of cartoons by Margaret Ahern, who took over the series after LeBlanc’s early death.)

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996719
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996715
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 8.5 inches

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Party Line Comics

In the early 1950s, cartoonist Dik Browne, best known as the creator of Hagar the Horrible and as the original artist on Hi & Lois, drew “Life’s That Way…”, a series of six-panel comic strips to be used in ads for local telephone companies. These stories focused on teaching proper phone etiquette, particularly for users of party lines, when several households shared a single phone line.

32 black-and-white pages
Comics issue format (though shorter than standard)
Cover price: $5.99
NOTE: Does not mix-and-match with other items toward free shipping for wholesale orders

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The Dalgoda Omnibus

by Jan Strnad and Dennis Fujitake

Dalgoda is on a desperate mission to save his world from alien invaders. The planet Canida, where the dominant species evolved from canines, faces annihilation by the warlike Nimp unless Dal can muster Earth’s resources in Canida’s defense. Can he trust a race of erratic, violent beings evolved from apes? Dog may be Man’s best friend, but so far, Dal has met with bigotry, deceit, and attempted assassination…and that’s just Day One.

By turns light-hearted and dramatic, humorous and heartbreaking, Dalgoda tells the story of an unlikely hero with the weight of salvation on his shoulders.

The Dalgoda Omnibus collects all eight issues of Jan Strnad and Dennis Fujitake’s outstanding science fiction series, a series reviewers called one of the best and most original to emerge from the 1980s independent comics movement. In addition, the Omnibus includes the four-part Dalgoda miniseries Flesh & Bones and two bonus short stories, one illustrated by comics great Kevin Nowlan—in all, over 300 pages of extraordinary comic book storytelling—plus a gallery of Dalgoda conceptual and promotional artwork by Fujitake.

Jan Strnad is a writer of comic books, cartoons, novels, and short stories. He’s worked for Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and independent comics (and comix) publishers, and for studios including Disney, Universal, Sony/Columbia and others. He and his wife Julie are ardent dog-lovers who have owned and fostered over a hundred dogs.

Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Dennis Fujitake was reprimanded in kindergarten for using too much drawing paper. Undeterred, he continues to this day to use too much drawing paper—for which people have willingly paid him, much to his bafflement. Ever the optimist, Dennis looks forward to living another 75 years.

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 359 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996824
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996821
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.42 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.44 x 0.81 x 9.69 inches
Cover price: $29.99 US

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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: the Comic Strip

After Gentlemen Prefer Blondes became a best-selling novel but before any of the play adaptations reached Broadway or any of the film versions hit the big screen, Anita Loos brought her vapid, cunning, obsessed Lorelei Lee (and her friend Dorothy and their gentleman sponsors) to the daily paper, creating a comic strip that both adapted from and expanded on the novel. Now this long-overlooked treasure of the Jazz Age has been brought back to print, collected for the first time in this complete and full-sized edition. Over 100 strips, filled with humor and the fresh fashion of its time. Art is provided by Virginia Huget, who want on to do a series of flapper cartoon features for the front pages of newspapers’ color sections; and Phil Cook, whose brief career as a comics artist and Collier’s cover artist got set aside when he got his own syndicated radio comedy show.

Content note: This historic volume contains racial caricatures of a style that were common at the time but would be considered inappropriate today.

This 64 page paperback comes in two editions, both with the same content, but differing in size and print quality. An affordable edition, 8.5″x6″, is available through Amazon, while a more upscale edition, 11″x8.5″, is available though Lulu.com.

Metronome

In this bold experimental work, father of the British graphic novel Bryan Talbot uses structure, rhythm, form, repetition, and alteration to create an adults-only experience that is fascinating, innovative, trippy, and erotic.

Metronome is wordless. Its language is purely visual, even as it creates a sense of a sound, a beat, that can be sensed even though it is not truly heard.

Acclaimed as one of the top graphic novels of the year by New York magazine, which called it an “elegant, wordless work of art.”

Introduction by Bone creator Jeff Smith.

This book was originally published in 2008, credited to nom de plume “Véronique Tanaka”. This edition contains interviews with both Talbot and Tanaka.

Bryan Talbot has won the Eisner Award, the Mekon Award, the UK Comic Art Award, the Eagle Award, the Haxtur Award, and the Costa biography award. In 2024 he was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame.

$12 US. Adults only

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 72 pages, 8.5 x 0.19 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996743
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996746

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BrainStorm!

Before Bryan Talbot brought us The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, The Tale of One Bad Rat, Alice in Sunderland, The Grandville Series, and Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, he was an underground cartoonist, bringing his energy and love of visual detail to hallucinatory, drug-laden, adult themes of the underground comix form. This volume includes his graphic novel Chester P. Hackenbush: The Psychadelic Alchemist (a work which was influential on such things as the Alan Moore Swamp Thing run), an adventure of Ace Wimslow: Freelance Rock Reporter, the pothead strip series Smokey Bears, plus covers and more, brought back to print for the first time in decades!

Bryan Talbot has received several Eagle Awards, a UK Comic Art award, a Society of Strip illustrators Mekon Award, an Eisner Award, a Haxtur Award, and an honorary doctorate form the University of Sunderland. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, In 2024 he was inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame.

$20 US

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 109 pages, 8.5 x 11 inches
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996689
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996685

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