The fifteen cartoonists from the first few decades of the last century are well known enough to have their own Wikipedia entries, except for two, though: Walt Bradford and George Swanson. Several of the thirteen are rightly famous enough to have retrospectives of their work published, but it's interesting that these titles were really only published in the last few years. I'm thinking of Goldberg, Herriman, Segar and Gross. Publishers have realized that their work is historically worth revealing to a new audience.
Paul Tumey must have done a lot of research to gather so much detail about long-dead cartoonists and found copious examples of their work. I thought one of the strengths of the book is the pages and pages of newspaper strips from each artist and nicely in color; if that's how they originally appeared. No doubt everyone will have their faves, mine is George Herriman with his Stumble Inn, a sort of forerunner to his brilliant Krazy Kat.
I was pleasantly surprised at how good this book looks owing to the design efforts of Dean Mullaney and Lorraine Turner. There is a ot of attention to detail that many other publishers wouldn't bother with. If you want to know what millions laughed at and long before Mad magazine and the National Lampoon, the work of these great cartoonists will fill you in.
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