The Collected Doug Wright: Volume One: Canada's Master Cartoonist [Hardcover]

Doug Wright (Author), Lynn Johnston (Introduction), Seth (Designer)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 2009

A career-spanning retrospective of one of the masters of North American cartooning

The first of a historic two-volume set, The Collected Doug Wright: Canada’s Master Cartoonist presents the first-ever comprehensive look at the life and career of one of the most-read and best-loved cartoonists of the 1960s. Compiled in cooperation with Doug Wright’s family, it draws from thousands of pieces of art, pictures, letters, and the artist’s own journals to provide a fully rounded view of Wright, both as a cartoonist and as an individual.

Volume One follows the artistic development of the British-born cartoonist from his earliest unpublished work to the first days of his most enduring comic strip, Nipper. First published in 1949, a full year before the debut of Peanuts, this wordless strip perfectly captured the humorous—and frustrating—side of parenting for several generations of both young and old. Remembered by many for Wright’s cartoon children’s striped shirts and bald heads, Nipper quickly grew into a Canadian phenomenon.

Designed by the acclaimed cartoonist and Peanuts designer Seth and featuring a biographical essay by the writer Brad Mackay, this lavish hardcover collection gives Wright’s career the recognition it has long been due. The introduction is by one of the most famous working cartoonists today, Lynn Johnston of the syndicated heavyweight comic strip For Better or For Worse.

“I don’t think I’d have had the basics needed to do a syndicated comic strip had it not been for Doug Wright” (Lynn Johnston, from the introduction).

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Doug Wright (1917–1983) was a Canadian cartoonist whose weekly comic strip Doug Wright’s Family, aka Nipper, ran for more than thirty-five years in magazines and newspapers across Canada and the United States.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly (May 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1897299524
• ISBN-13: 978-1897299524
• Product Dimensions: 15 x 11.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #668,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #99 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Publishers > Drawn and Quarterly

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The collected Doug Wright: Volume One: Canada's Master Cartoonist, May 25, 2010

By 

J. Williams (Saskatchewan,Can.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Collected Doug Wright: Volume One: Canada's Master Cartoonist (Hardcover)

I was really please to find this collection of Droug Wrights' cartoons. He was truly a master of getting the joke across with little or no words. To be able to capture family life in just a few simple drawing is wonderful. Most of the cartoons are still current with life today. I love the fact that everything looks like it should- a table looks like a table picture at the right angle from the viewers perspective. I can't wait to see volume two. Anyone know when it is due out?

4 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Canada's Master Cartoonist, May 14, 2009

By 

Herve Saint-Louis (Calgary, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Collected Doug Wright: Volume One: Canada's Master Cartoonist (Hardcover)

The value of this overpriced book is only to understand the cultural elite which Wright was part of in Montreal during the 1940-1950s. His work was the embodiment of the English-speaking upper class that dominated the French-speaking majority. The total omission of any historical context in Wright's work, and in the long introduction by the editors only reveals and reinforce English-speaking Canada's contempt and dislike for its French-speaking equivalent.

Wright's work was nowhere the equivalent of Charles Schultz as the publishers of the book try to assert. At best he was a good storyteller but with not much imagination or groundbreaking ideas. Even Hank Ketcham' Dennis the Menace was more "profound" with themes relatively similar.

As for the quality of the book, many of the strips were not cleaned up and showed the ridges of the original newspapers they were scanned from. Readers deserve more than bloated scans without any retouching. Interested readers might as well go to public archives and find similar source material at the same quality. There's no value added to this book.

The illustration work of Wright is good though and rendering silent scenes is his specialty.