1950s – About Comics

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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Bus Busters: Expanded Edition

What do you get when someone with fifteen years experience driving big Greyhound buses turns into a nationally syndicated cartoonist? You get Bus Busters, filled with cartoons by bus-driver Wally Falk showing the beleaguered drivers, the amusing and often clueless passengers, and the joy and surprises to be found traveling America’s highways. Bus Busters first and last saw print in 1954, but now it’s back, with not only all of the cartoons from the original edition, but also dozens more, selected from the run of Falk’s syndicated newspaper panel “Kickin’ Around”.

About the author: Minneapolis’s Wally Falk spent fifteen years as Greyhound bus driver followed by sixteen years behind the drawing desk, creating two gag panel series for America’s comic pages: first, “Kickin’ Around” (1945-1956) and then “The Family Car” (1956-1961). He was also the original illustrator for the daily adage feature “The Country Parson”.

$12 US

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 127 pages, 5.25 x 8 inches
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996778
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996777

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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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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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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
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Speck the Altar Boy: The Collection Compilation

Speck is the ultimate altar boy, half holy, half hellion, well-intentioned but oh, so distractible. Some of us remember dealing with him, others of us remember being him.

Margaret Ahern spent a quarter century drawing the adventures of the never-aging Speck, being one of the few female cartoonists to take part in the Catholic cartoon explosion of the 1950s and one of the artists who stuck with the form the longest. This book collects the first two collections of her work (Speck the Altar Boy and Presenting… Speck the Altar Boy), both out of print for decades, into a single volume for the first time, with hundreds of prime Speck cartoons. Also available: AN ALTAR BOY NAMED ‘SPECK’, a collection of cartoons by Speck’s creator, W. R. “Tut” LeBlanc.

Paperback : 211 pages
ISBN-10 : 194999631X
Item Weight : 11.8 ounces
Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.53 x 8.5 inches

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An Altar Boy Named ‘Speck’

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!

Here, back in print for the first time in over 60 years, is the very first collection of Speck cartoons. “An Altar Boy Named ‘Speck'” started appearing in Catholic Action o the South (the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans) in 1951, and by 1952 the comic was already being collected into books and was signed with a national distributor.

Unfortunately, the comic’s creator, W. R. “Tut” LeBlanc, passed away in 1953. The feature was taken over by cartoonist Margaret Ahern, who kept it running until 1979.

Paperback : 107 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-1949996302
Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.27 x 8.5 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

Bon Bon Voyage

by Bill O’Malley

From the golden era of American travel comes these cartoons about the cruising life, about life both aboard ship and at the locations that the travel to. All from the talented pen of Bill O’Malley, whose acclaimed books about two little nuns set of a craze. This 1958 classic, out of print for more than half a century, is finally available again!

Paperback : 96 pages, 5.25″x8″
ISBN-10 : 1949996158
ISBN-13 : 978-1949996159

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Angels Everywhere!

drawn by Don Cornelius, written by Margaret Carroll and Jerry McCue

Sister Veronica and Sister Celeste are nuns off to see the world. in the 1950s, they were the stars of a trilogy of cartoon booklets. Out of print for half a century, Angels Abroad, Angels on Campus, and The Angels and the City are now collected into one volume for the first time!

Paperback : 239 pages, 6″ x 9″
ISBN-10 : 1949996220
ISBN-13 : 978-1949996227

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