Volume One of The Complete Little Orphan Annie contains more than 1,000 daily comics in nine complete stories, from the very first strip in August 1924 through October 1927. In the pages of "Will Tomorrow Ever Come?" readers will discover how Annie escapes the orphanage and is ultimately adopted by "Daddy;" how she finds that loveable mutt Sandy and rescues him from being tortured; how she meets the Silos, who become recurring characters throughout the series; how she joins the circus and first encounters Pee Wee the elephant; and how, broke and alone, she hits the road on a succession of dangerous yet spiritually uplifting adventures. This volume also includes an index, and a biographical essay by Jeet Heer.
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The fact that Little Orphan Annie remains a recognizable pop-culture figure is due more to the frequently revived Broadway musical than its comic-strip progenitor, which began in 1924 and continues, albeit in a moribund state, to this day. In its heyday, the strip’s spunky redheaded heroine, plucked from a Dickensian orphanage by kindly millionaire Daddy Warbucks, proved irresistible to mainstream America. The initial three years of daily episodes collected here have a mostly humorous tone. In subsequent decades, Gray would lead the cast on darker adventures that were vehicles for his conservative, pro-business politics. Like many early-twentieth-century strips, Annie was at first primitively drawn. Unlike most of his peers, Gray never totally shed that initial crudeness, which, in tandem with his equally rough politics, guaranteed the bluntness that gave Annie much of its distinctive charm. Gray had the foresight to hold on to nearly all his original drawings, so that they were available for this attractively designed volume that includes an invaluable biographical essay by comics scholar Jeet Heer. --Gordon Flagg
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hope This Project Becomes the Definitive Little Orphan Annie Collection,
By Dan (Saint Paul, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Complete Little Orphan Annie Volume 1 (Complete Little Orphan Annie) (Hardcover)
LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE is a pioneer of girl's adventure, alongside Frank L. Baum's OZ books. If your only exposure to Annie is the musical, then you'll be surprised by the melodrama that is Harold Gray's newspaper strip.
In volume one of IDW Publishing's complete LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE series, the strip begins. The first LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE comic appeared in daily newspapers on August 5, 1924. The strip made its first appearance in the Sunday funnies three months later. Gray wrote and drew LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE for forty-four years, from 1924 to his death in 1968. It is my hope that IDW completes the run in the series of books beginning with this volume. It would take a lifetime to assemble a run of original newspaper pages of a comic strip, in order to read them. About 36 months of strips (nine stories) were reprinted by Cupples & Leon between 1926 and 1934, and the Platinum Age comic books have been recently reprinted, but they are abridged and incomplete. In 1970, Arlington House (Nostalgia Press) published ARF: THE LIFE AND HARD TIMES OF LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE: 1935-1945. Although it's a lavish production, the handsome, massive volume is wrought with errors, omissions, and lengthy gaps in storylines. Many of the strips are shuffled out of order, and only about half of the stories from the period are represented. To date, the best presentation of a run of LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE was published by Abrams in 1977 in an impressive book titled THE SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION OF NEWSPAPER COMICS. The complete story, about four weeks in length, which was originally published in newspapers from October to November, 1938, is reprinted with a week of dailies arranged on a page facing the Sunday, reprinted full page. In 1987, Fantagraphics Books began production of a series, planning to reprint the complete LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE, but the project was aborted in 1995. In five volumes, the entire run of daily and Sunday strips from 1931 to 1935 is reprinted, but a production error mixed up the order of the strips in the last volume. And in 2002, Pacific Comics published ten 1925-1929 LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE stories (about three years of daily strips), in Cupples & Leon-style storybooks, with almost unabridged runs. But this will be the first time the complete LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE is reprinted. IDW has an opportunity to produce the definitive set of books. Most of Harold Gray's LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE comic strips from 1936-1968 have never been reprinted. HAROLD GRAY'S LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE VOLUME ONE (1924-1927) is very nicely bound, and reproduction quality of the complete daily run, nine consecutive stories, is excellent. Exactly one-dozen Sunday pages from the period appear in the book's introduction. Including the first Sunday from November 2, 1924, printed sideways on one page, together with three more single-page gag Sundays and eight continuity-story Sundays reduced in size to fit two per page. The current format will work very well for the first two volumes, covering the dailies for the period from 1924 to 1930. I hope that IDW has the good sense to switch to a vertical, rather than oblong, format for the series beginning with volume three. It is my sincere hope that Harold Gray's complete body of work is reprinted in the best possible manner, much like Fantagraphics Books' current projects, the series reprinting E.C. Segar's POPEYE and George Herriman's KRAZY KAT. Most importantly, the vertical format, as it was used for LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE in THE SMITHSONIAN COLLECTON OF NEWSPAPER COMICS, is easy to read. Also, one very nice feature of the SMITHSONIAN format is that it allows enough room to reprint the entire Sunday page, including the MAW GREEN 'topper' that was written and drawn by Gray. Another feature of importance will be whether IDW includes the Sunday half-page LITTLE JOE stories that were written and drawn by Gray (under the pseudonym 'Ed Leffingwell'), for about two decades from the 1930s to 1950s. The inclusion of LITTLE JOE would be icing on the cake, making IDW the leader in the field of classic comic strip reprints. IDW Publishing's other project THE COMPLETE CHESTER GOULD'S DICK TRACY (which is also a fantastic newspaper strip) is diminished by the publisher's insistence on using an oblong format, reducing the Sundays and rearranging the panels to fit onto the page, in a format so miniscule as to be rendered unreadable. The oblong format works well for post-WWII strips, such as Fantagraphics' series THE COMPLETE PEANUTS, but classic Sunday newspaper comics like POPEYE and LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE are better suited to a vertical presentation. I'm not as much concerned about whether the Sunday pages are printed in color or black & white; there are advantages to both. But if the Sundays are in color, I strongly prefer the color of facsimile pages as they appeared in newspapers to the odd-looking color of syndicate proofs, as were used in the introduction of this volume. If IDW completes the forty-four year run of Harold Gray's LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE in a series of books as beautifully bound as VOLUME ONE (1924-1927), and if the third volume of the series circles back to pick up the Sunday pages from the 1920s (most of which have never been reprinted) in a vertical format with facsimile color. And if the balance of the set incorporates the daily/Sunday continuity in the proper order, with the Sundays reproduced in a readable-size format, then HAROLD GRAY'S LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE will be the definitive collection to have. As a stand-alone volume, this book is the best presentation yet of the first three years of LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE dailies, a few of which have never been reprinted, and none of which has ever been reprinted this nicely.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fulfilling and Grand Volume Holds Great Promise For Future Books,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Complete Little Orphan Annie Volume 1 (Complete Little Orphan Annie) (Hardcover)
Received my copy - beautiful to behold and read. The introductory text and accompanying photographs are well-researched and written. The reproductions of the strips are astoundingly clear (almost all of them come from Gray's own copies).
I, too, am interested in seeing the Sundays included... not necessarily in color. Given how Gray constructed his stories, they're certainly not mandatory from a plot perspective, but it would be nice to have all of them included along with the dailies. With all of these gorgeous reprint projects underway, I hope that IDW can keep up and continue on into the 50s and 60s (with Dick Tracy, too) as many projects in the past have lost steam and interest once the 30s or 40s are completed. Gray's (and Gould's) work in these later decades strikes me as the most ignored in reprint editions... In any case, can't wait to read more in September with volume 2.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
relax and enjoy.....,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Complete Little Orphan Annie Volume 1 (Complete Little Orphan Annie) (Hardcover)
another classic comic strip lovingly reproduced for today. and what choices: terry and the pirates, moon mullins (not good reproduction but well worth seeking), dick tracy,, li'l abner, gasoline alley (what a wonderful strip!!!), krazy kat and others from the golden age of the comics and annie is a great as the rest.
this is one of the best buys on amazon as there are hours of reading here and it's almost impossible not to fall in love with harold gray's spunky creation. sandy is more human than 95% of today's comic characters and annie, being a girl, was a trailblazer. she took nothing from anyone and usually clobbered boys whenever she had a fight - and she had many. the 1920s were a fun time and annie and the other comic strip characters make a wonderful time machine to - for a while - leave the world of today. this is a trip back in time well worth taking.
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