The Comics: Since 1945 [Paperback]

Brian Walker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2006

The most comprehensive survey of postwar comics, covering the period when some of our best-known cartoonists were at their creative peaks, The Comics Since 1945 is now available in a revised and updated paperback edition. Organized by decade, illustrated with exemplary selections of historic comic strips, and supplemented by biographical profiles of the artists, it is both comprehensive and graphically stunning, ideal for both devoted comics fans and serious students of popular culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Founder and former director of the International Cartoon Museum of Art, Walker here presents a survey of postwar strips that made it to the big time of daily syndication, as well as of their creators. Strip illustrations (210 in color, 776 in all) range from Little Orphan Annie collecting scrap metal to help the war effort, to Doonesbury's Zonker parodying interactive media by losing his punchline to a computer error. Walker, who since 1984 "has been part of the creative team that produces Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois," orients the book toward hugely popular strips like the still-running Peanuts, B.C. and Garfield and cubicle-based smash Dilbert, and thus ends up giving more of a history of American taste than of the entire form. Still, readers will be happy to rediscover the likes of '80s media tweaker John Darling; genre strips like the western Red Ryder (1938-64), '50s sci-fi Twin Earths and the adventure strip Steve Canyon; and Walt Kelly's ever-influential Pogo. Proceeding chronologically, Walker notes the effects of the invention of television, the politics of syndication, and the means of racial integration, and offers biographical profiles tracking the careers of all the names less familiar to us than the characters-the cartoonists. The whole feels a little too accepting of the dictates of syndication for a mass audience, but it is a solid account of the way various artists have worked within that system.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Brian Walker is a founder and former director of the Museum of Cartoon Art (now the National Cartoon Museum). He is also part of the creative team that produces Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois. He lives in Connecticut.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams; Pbk. Ed edition (September 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810992604
• ISBN-13: 978-0810992603
• Product Dimensions: 12.5 x 9.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,357,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Look at the Funnies, December 14, 2002

By 

mrliteral - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Comics: Since 1945 (Hardcover)

I've felt for a while that the newspaper comic strip is the most ignored form of popular art, rarely looked at critically. While comic books prosper and have gone well beyond the standard superhero format, the comic strip languishes, rarely allowing new and creative strips to break through, while "institutional" strips (those that have not been amusing for years but are institutions, such as Heathcliff or Crock) dominate the paper.

In this sense, this book is not very helpful; it is a relatively uncritical appreciation of the comics. Nonetheless, it is an excellent book, a good summary of the major artists and developments in the comics since World War II. All the big strips are here: Garfield, Peanuts, Doonesbury, Calvin & Hobbes, the Far Side and many more, along with plenty of material from bygone eras.

This book is around 50% text and 50% comics, so there is plenty of fun stuff to read in either format. For what it is - an appreciative history - it is fantastic. The only flaw is that Walker ignores the comic strips of alternative newspapers, therefore neglecting such important works as Groening's Life in Hell (without which, there would be no Simpsons).

For anyone who has ever enjoyed the comics, this book is a great look at the field and a lot of fun.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best single-volume history of the comics, November 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Comics: Since 1945 (Hardcover)

Outstanding job. In every way, this book surpasses its precursors. I wasn't sure, at first, exactly HOW it was better than Blackbeard and Crain, Marschall, Horn, Wood, Blackbeard and Williams et. al. Then I pulled all those old volumes off my shelf. I saw the big difference at once: the layout and presentation is far and away the smartest. It's clear! It's easy to see and read! It doesn't turn the comics into a mystery and a cult; it renders this original American art form as history. Just take a look at Marschall and some of the others: the reader never knows where he or she is in time or even which artist's work is under consideration---or why. For a single-volume history, the clarity and compassion of this book, its generosity both to the reader and to the comics and to the comic artists makes it incomparable. Even a simple touch such as the artist's self-portraiture and self-caricature, carried throughout, becomes a kind of compass point for the reader. The prose is also first-rate, the research is bottom-of-the-well deep and feels deeply reliable, but the real achievement here is Walker's powers of selection. He's the David Lean of comic strip historians---bringing in the whole epic of the comics since 1945 in 325 shimmering, clear pages. I personally would have liked more of the character and personality of the comic strip artists themselves, but in fact, Walker has given us everything we need here (even Al Capp's parody of Peanuts), and, as Lean often said, the real power of the story comes from everything you leave out.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Down the Memory Lane of Comics..., April 28, 2005

By 

J. Guild (Toronto,Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Comics: Since 1945 (Hardcover)

Hey,where to start in writing a review on a book about Comics, when one has been reading them for over 60 years.An excellent book in every way.Physically,this book is beautifully constructed,with top of the line paper,printing and color illustrations.A great dust jacket, as well as glossy hard covers printed with comic strips.A large volume 10X14 inches,over an inch thick and 326 pages...WOW! By the way ,there is a companion book,which is just as good,covering Comics before 1945;same size and by the same author.
What great memories this book brought back.I was born in 1935 and was an avid Comic Strip reader of 10 where this book starts.
While there are many strips covered in this book that are unfamiliar to me,and probably to most people;all my favourites are there.All through the years,in my opinion the Strips and writers were at their best in the 40's and 50's.But then that was when they were really growing up and so was I.
My favourites were Dick Tracy,Little Orphan Annie,Li'l Abner,Smilin' Jack,Popeye,Beetle Baily,Joe Palooka,Blondie,Tarzan,Captain Easy,Mandrake the Magician,Mutt and Jeff ,Smokey Stover,Henry,Superman,Terry and the Pirates,Pogo and later Doonesbury.
Dick Tracy was my overall favourite,especially in its prime with super characters such as Flattop,Mumbles,The Mole,Brow, B.O.Plenty,Gravel Gertie and little Pebbles,Pruneface,etc.,etc.
Then there was Li'l Abner with Daisy Mae and Ma and Pa Yokum.The nation wide craze set off by those wonderful Shmoos and then the creation of Sadie Hawkins Day antics that swept the schools and colleges.Nothing like that kind of stuff today!
I guess all this fun was just too much for the prudes of political correctness, and their misguided efforts put the end to it all.
At the height of the Comic Strip days,everyone was aware of the 'funnies'and knew all the characters.If you didn't know who Dagwood or Annie's dog Sandy,or Fearless Fosdick was;you just didn't know what was happening.There is nothing like it today.I found the papers kept dropping reader favourites,cutting back on the number of strips,introducing strips with agendas and social engineering,to the point many readers lost interest and abandoned them.
As a matter of fact ,I was really following only Pogo and Doonesbury for the last few years and sadly we have even lost Pogo.Dick Tracy is not even carried by out largest paper in Toronto.I just read the Tracy strips on the Net for 2005.Fletcher and Collins give it a good try,but the storylines and artwork fall way short of the master, Chester Gould.Not only that,punching the keyboard and reading the screen is a poor subsitute for sitting back with the funny papers enjoying a coffee after breakfast or dinner;again in my opinion.
This book also covers a lot of what I call cartoons,and does a great job of it,but cartoons just aren't what the world of Comic Strips was all about.
Walker has also included a huge list of references if one wants to dig further.
This book should not be thought of as a review of any particular strip.It is really a history of Comics,a reference to use if one wants a quick look-see of what a strip looked like and a little about the artists who drew the strips.It also tells a lot about what went on behind the scenes with the artists,newspapers and syndicates over the years.
It also talks about Comics as an artform.Here I agree,one only has to look at how the artwork progressed in a strip like Dick Tracy and more recently Doonesbury,to see the advancement from very simple sketches to excellent art of colors, silhouette,perspective and all, to appreciate it.
After reading the book, I hope one day to visit the International Museum of Cartoon Art;although I continue to think of the Comic Strips as one thing and Cartoons as something completely different.
A great gift for a friend or yourself if you were a follower of the "strips".