I’m talking pre-WWII, the Golden Age of the Comic Strip, when the funny pages would cover your whole dining room table (not that I experienced that first-hand, of course).
Krazy Kat, Popeye, Little Nemo, Little Orphan Annie. Ever since the demise of Kitchen Sink Press, there’s been a dearth of reprints of these and other classic strips.
However, Krazy Kat is now on its way to being reprinted in its entirety. Gasoline Alley is also on the wings. And I think there are plans to reprint some of George Herriman’s lesser strips, like Stumble Inn and Baron Bean. So, with that in mind:
What are your favorite classic comic strips?
What complete collection do you dream of having?
I realize this is a really obscure hobby on a board full of obscure hobbies. But there have to be some people who are dying to own the Complete Smythes or the Collected Somebody’s Stenog!
Krazy Kat, by far. The news about reprints is great to hear.
I like Windsor McKay’s “Little Nemo,” but prefer Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend. It is probably the most disturbing strip in the history of comics, joking about embarassment, crossdressing, public nudity, and death (his strip about the man dreaming about his own funeral is astounding). It’s all very funny the first time, but very dark as you read it over.
If I had unlimited funds, I’d want:
Krazy Kat
Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend
Thimble Theater starring Popeye
Mickey Mouse (the Floyd Gottfriedson strips)
Wash Tubbs
Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo (just to see how Verbeek did it)*
Pogo (not pre-war, but tough)
Dick Tracy (of the period)
Barney Google
*For those who need an explanation, the strip was written so you read it, then turned it upside down, and read the rest. Each panel portrayed two scenes – one rightside up, the other upside down.
Actually, this was reprinted in (AFIK) it’s entirety from Fantagraphics Press
Great stuff, but I want to see the pre-Popeye Thimble Theaters.
I’d love to see a complete Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend.
And if we stretch a point and go to the '50s, I’d love to see a complete reprint of “Barnaby and Mr. O’Malley”, as well as another Johnson strip (that I’ve never seen even a panel of) called something like “The Little Guy With the Eyes”.
Oh, and as long as I’m griping about the '50s strips, reprint the really early Peanuts strips in their entirety too: only a small selection of the first few years was ever reprinted and dammit! early Schultz was brilliant.
I’m all about Krazy, kids. I’m glad about the Fantagraphics reprints, and also think the collection (edited by Patrick McDonnell…you know the one I’m talking about, right?) was pretty good.
I also love Pogo but the collections are hard to find and there are millions of them, which are so often redundant.
Little Nemo is gorgeous but I’d rather have them framed on my wall than actually read them…I agree on Rarebit Fiend as far as its being more interesting but ultimately I think McKay was stronger as a visual artist than he was as a writer. So if I were making a desert island list of Winsor McKay things (heh, likely) I think it’d include more Nemo.
Any Charles Schulz is good. But of course. I like the look of his early strips a lot…how did those kids’ bodies support their heads? In the latest Peanuts “art book” that’s out, there’s a page with a drawing of Ignatz throwing a brick at Charlie Brown. I nearly died.
Del Rey Books did a series of paperback reprints of “Barnaby” in the 80s. <gloat> I have #1-6. </gloat> They originally were planning to do the entire run, but stopped.
Don’t know if you know it, but there was a collection a few years back celebrating the anniversary (80th? 75th?) of the strip that reprinted ones from the very beginning all the way until a few years before Fred Laswell died. Quite good, and probably easy to find cheap, if you are so inclined.
This is true. I think I read somewhere that the reasons his word balloons were so unreadable was because he used to draw the balloons first and then try and cram all his lettering into it. He didn’t really seem to care about the words.
Another amazing thing to consider about Nemo is that it was a weekly strip, so he only had seven days to create each one. Makes his talent seem all the more impressive.
I know I said pre-WWII strips, but that was mostly to avoid people saying they’d like the complete B.C. or Zits or Cathy or whatever, which are really not my cup of tea. So yeah, I have to give Peanuts, Pogo, and Barnaby a free pass. Classics no matter what era. I’d also add King Aroo, which may be getting reprinted by the same company that’s doing the Krazy dailies (not Fantagraphics; they’re doing the sundays).
My personal list:
Dick Tracy (I’d like to see the whole run, actually, up until Gould died)
Mickey Mouse by Gottfredson (these were cut up and reprinted in comic book form a few years ago, but I’d like to see them unaltered)
The Katzenjammer Kids
more Little Orphan Annie
Stumble Inn
Bringing Up Father
the Little King
Mutt and Jeff
The rest of Polly and her Pals
The Smythes (I’ve really only seen two of these strips in my life, but they instantly charmed me)
I’m glad to see so many classic stripophiles (stripfans? stripophiliacs?) on the board!
Are you familiar with NEMO magazine, devoted to the history of comic strips, which the Fantagraphics boys published back in the 1980s? I’ve got the entire series…great stuff.
Put me down for complete runs of Foxy Grandpa
Mr. E.Z. Mark
The Newlyweds
The Naps of Polly Sleepyhead, and Nibsy the Newsboy in Funny Fairyland
And PLEASE won’t somebody finish the damn run of Li’l Abner? Kitchen Sink got up as far as the 1959 dailies, if I’m not mistaken. Someone’s got to get it through the '70s, then jump back and do all the Sunday strips!
Oh, heck yeah. Barnaby. I thought he was 40’s, though (at least when Crockett Johnson was writing it).
And I thought every Peanuts strip was in print. Hmm. Well, The Washington Post ran Peanuts from Day 1. Next time I’m at a library that has the Post on microfilm/fiche I’ll have to go through all 17,000 days from October 2, 1950 to February 13, 2000 to make sure I haven’t missed one.
Yes! I just found out about NEMO last year, when I started to get into old strips. I’ve so far managed to grab about half of them, and it has quickly become one of my favorite magazines ever. That’s where I first read King Aroo.
I second that! Maybe Fantagraphics will do it, much like they took over for Eclipse on Krazy Kat.
My favorite christmas present ever! I was about 13 years old and my mom got me “The Collected works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” I still have it 30 years later and still read it every now and then. I only wish I had the gumption to go out and find the endings to some of the strips that just cut off in that book, to see if Buck really did beat Pounce or if Bucky and Alura got off that Martian prison island… dang.
This was a one-two punch christmas, I also got a hardback copy of “The Great Comic Book Heroes” with an introduction by Jules Feiffer, that’s why I had the best mom in the whooole world!
Oh, yeah, I had that Buck Rogers collection, too. (God, did I ever have the adolescent hots for Wilma Deering.)
Got it as a gift along with the big Dick Tracy book that came out at the same time (the one that cut off the end of the wartime “Brow” sequence, so it was years before I found out that the Brow got himself impaled to death on a flagpole. Ouch.)
