Category: Comic strips

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The Family Car Road Trip

The 1950s and ‘60s were the classic era of the American road trip. With cars having become ubiquetous and airfare still unaffordable, we took our vacations in our sedans and station wagons. We traveled endless stretches of asphalt during the day by following the lines on awkwardly-folded maps or AAA Triptiks. We squeezed intogether each night at motels, motor lodges, and campsites at night. The travel time was filled with license plate games and back seat battles, with stops for gas, service station bathroom breaks, natural wonders, bizarre roadside attractions, and if you were lucky, a pecan log.

Wally Falk was there to chronicle it all. A former bus driver, he knew the nation’s roadways like few others. His daily syndicated comic panel The Family Car chronicled our love for and struggles with our vehicles and our destinations. Here is the first collection ever from that series, focusing on those family trips and the adventures of the open road.

$9.99 US

  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 107 pages, 5.25 x 8 inches
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996751
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996753

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Dazzling Diamond Lil’

Cover to Dazzling Diamond Lil’, featuring a head shot of a girl with blond curls and diamonds for eyes.

She’s a little gem with diamonds for eyes!

The year after the great Bill Woggon created Katy Keene, the comic book character who would bring him to attention and gain him the lasting love of fans, he created another special character. Diamond Lil’ reached the nation’s newspapers not on the comics page, but in jewelry store ads, where week after week she would promote the advantages of buying from the local shop, often in the most ridiculous ways. While Katy went on to a long-running comics career and ever her own TV series, Lil’ has been long forgotten and never collected… until now. Finally, over seventy years since she first saw print, her cartoons are available again for a whole new audience. Includes an introduction by Eisner Award-winning comics history writer Nat Gertler.

  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 103 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996603
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996609
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.06 x 0.24 x 7.81 inches
  • Cover price: $10 US

Order now from Amazon!

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The Wolf: Expanded Edition

This World War II classic is back!

“Along with the jeep, the robot bomb and Spam, the wolf in GI clothing will become one of the historical mementos of World War II.” —Life

When the attack on Pearl Harbor turned Golden Age comic book and advertising artist Leonard Sansone into Pvt. Sansone, he brought his art tools and sense of humor with him. The Wolf, his comics panel about a girl-crazed soldier went quickly from being in his local camp paper to appearing in thousands of service papers wherever Americans were stationed. Here, the original 1945 edition, out of print for most of a century, is not only brought back but expanded with seventy additional post-war cartoons. Look out, ladies! The Wolf’s uniform may be gone; his obsession remains.

“Sansone’s work is marked by cleverness and originality” — Tampa Tribune

”The best in GI cartoons” — Pic

  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 177 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996557
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996555
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 0.45 x 8 inches

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Spot the Dog

Over a decade before George Booth brought his cartooning talent to the New Yorker, where his quirky style, wry sense of the world, and quirky view of dogs would get him recognized as one of America’s premiere cartoonists, he had a daily cartoon panel appearing in newspapers. That panel, Spot, about an aware, pipe-smoking starlet-chasing mutt and the family that loves him (well, puts up with him, more or less) has never before been collected. Here you have over 150 Spot cartoons, unseen for over sixty years.

  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 91 page
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996565
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996562
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 0.23 x 6 inches

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Wife Gets Smart, Makes Husband Happy: Supermarket Comic Strip Ads of World War II

Compiled & Annotated by Nat Gertler
Foreword by Dr. Vicki Howard

When a major American supermarket chain began including comic strips win their newspaper ads in 1941, they probably thought that it would just be a series of little tales that just reminded you to shop at their stores. But then America got pulled into the war, and the strip became an unintended chronicle of life on the homefront, with patriotism, shortages, rationing, fundraising, fears, hopes, and ultimately expectations of a better tomorrow. Here are the hundreds of strips that made up that campaign, which ran from 1941 to 1947. Plus, there’s dozens of examples of comic strips from ads for independent grocery stores from before and after the war, and as an added bonus, a healthy run of Glamorous Gloria, a hilarious strip advertising clothing stores.

“Nat Gertler’s Wife Gets Smart, Makes Husband Happy is a time capsule of comic strips that gives insight to an era in the United States where food rationing was enforced and families were encouraged to grow their own food so that more processed food was available for American soldiers. […] It’s a history book about mid-20th century America, a practical guide in using sequential art to quickly convey a message, and — if you happen to be a collector of grocery store memorabilia (yep, they exist) certain a book you’d want to have on your shelf. Grade: 5.0/5.0″ — RJ Carter, CriticalBlast.com

“The American comic industry has always had a space for small, independent publishers, and I’m glad, because it means you can sometimes stumble across something like this […] odd but strangely readable.” – Comics Worth Reading

  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 175 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996417
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996418
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 0.44 x 6 inches

Order now from Amazon!

 

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Bootsie’s Big ’50s: a Dark Laughter collection

“Negro America’s Favorite Cartoonist” – that’s what Langston Hughes called Ollie Harrington, whose cartoons and comic strips were a staple of America’s Black newspapers for decades starting in the 1930s. In his single-panel series “Dark Laughter,” Harrington brought out the vibrancy of Harlem life in its day, while serving some cutting looks at the politics of the time.

At the heart of “Dark Laughter” is Bootsie, a cunning, conning, girl-chasing ne’er-do-well who is nonetheless beloved in his Harlem community… if often reluctantly. Bootsie is both the victim of the world’s troubles and a frequent cause of them for others.

Here’s a collection of prime cartoons from the mid-1950s, drawn with the detailed joy that only Ol Harrington (who also worked as Oliver W. Harrington) could bring, finally available to a larger audience.

  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 155 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996352
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996357
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.04 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 0.35 x 11 inches
  • Order from Amazon!
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Bootsie’s War Years: a Dark Laughter collection

In the 1940s, the comics pages of America’s weekly Black newspapers were filled with characters both inspirational and aspirational. In addition to the life stories of great African Americans, there were fictional tales of Black reporters, Black detectives, Black government agents, Black aviators, Black people rising in the ranks of society, even Black superheroes, all to give their audiences the sense of the best that was possible.

Then there was Bootsie.

Bootsie was a liar, a womanizer, a layabout, a scammer, a cheat, and an all around disreputable dude. Among the denizens of Harlem he was scorned, threatened, detested… and yet nonetheless loved as a part of the community.

Collected in this book for the very first time are almost 150 “Dark Laughter” cartoons from 1941 through 1946, during which time Bootsie goes from being a draft evader to a draftee, an enlisted man, a serviceman on the ground in Europe, and ultimately to a veteran for the winning side. In these, cartoonist Ollie Harrington’s lively art captures the rich reality of Bootie’s world while telling tales that are sometimes joyous, sometimes very harsh, like the world itself.

  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 161 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996336
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996333
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.41 x 9 inches
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Cherry Sundae: The Complete Collection

Before Pete Tumlinson drew the early adventures of Marvel’s Kid Colt, Outlaw, he created this wild romp of a strip that was published in papers throughout the United States.
Cherry is a comely carrot-top car-hop at the local drive in who finds herself being courted by two young men. They battle for her attention and affection… on the land, in the water, and in the skies above!
Unseen since it ran in newspapers in the late 1940s, this offbeat strip is collected here for the first time, in this complete 75th anniversary edition.

  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 87 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996360
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996364
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 0.22 x 6 inches

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Bridge Mix: The Bridge Cartoons of Charles M. Schulz (color edition)

From the mind of Charles M. Schulz, the world’s most beloved cartoonist, comes these funny looks at the game of Bridge. The game, the culture, and the very human foibles of those who play it all come under his masterful attention, with over sixty cartoons in full color.
Charles Schulz was a player of various types of bridge over the years, and he included it in his famous comic strip. In the late 1950s, he set out to launch a new strip just about bridge and the people who played it. While the plan for the strip (called “It’s Only a Game”) eventually expanded to include other games and leisure activities, Schulz still made sure to include at least one cartoon each week about bridge, and those are all collected here, in this one volume, in color!

  • Paperback : 72 pages
  • ISBN-10 : 1949996174
  • ISBN-13 : 978-1949996173
  • Dimensions : 5 x 8 inches
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Miss Caroline: the Complete Camelot Collection

written by Gerald Gardner
drawn by Frank Johnson

The year was 1963. The Kennedy clan inhabited the White House, capturing the imagination of the Nation. JFK inspired the nation’s dreams. Jackie inspired the nation’s fashion. And young Miss Caroline Kennedy inspired a book of cartoons that found the humor in both White House life and in being the next generation in a dynasty.This edition collects, for the first time, all of the Miss Caroline cartoons that saw print, either in the book or in the strip’s brief newspaper run, all written by Gerald Gardner, a screenwriter on such hilarious series as Get Smart and The Monkees, and writer of the best-selling “Who’s In Charge Here?” photofunny books and drawn by Frank Johnson of “Boner’s Ark.”

  • Paperback : 135 pages, 5.25″x8″
  • ISBN-10 : 1949996271
  • ISBN-13 : 978-1949996272

Order it from Amazon! (Or ask your favorite independent bookseller to order it for you.)