Customer Reviews

Lulu Goes Shopping (Marge's Little Lulu Volume 4)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was very pleased to see that Dark Horse Books have taken on the task of reprinting the Little Lulu comics. Much like the Peanuts serial reissues this book (Vol 1) gives you all the LuLu comics from issues #6 - #12. Vol 2 & 3 are soon on their way. These comics (besides the originals) were only previously available in very expensive reprint bindings that cost well over one hundred dollars and are long out of print. The price on these books is well affordable.
The comics are printed in Black & White Ink (but so were the earlier expensive reissues)but they are very crisp. If you have ever seen the "Little Lulu Show" with Tracy Ullman voicing Lulu, you will recall many of these comics.
I am still giving this collection 5 stars and my only suggestion is that I wish they had included the original cover art at the start of each # issue. I also am wondering if issues #1 through #5 will see the light of day.I hope they keep churning these delightful books out, until they covered them all. I've waited a long time for Little Lulu Comic Reprint Books and I know she, Tubby, Alvin, Iggy and Annie have many fans who will be pleased as punch to have them back.

In the early '90s, Another Rainbow Publishing embarked on a gargantuan task: to publish the entire run of Marge's Little Lulu comic books in an oversized, slipcased, hardback collector's edition. That beautiful series is now collectible and rare, the holy graal of Little Lulu collectors, but Dark Horse, with these new, affordable editions, has brought Marge's unsinkable moppet within reach of everyone. How do the series compare?

Amazon calls "Lulu Goes Shopping" volume one, but the Dark Horse edition is labeled #4, and contains seven comics that were originally published between November 1948 and June 1949 as "Marge's Little Lulu" issues six through twelve. This roughly corresponds to volume four, set two of the first series of the Another Rainbow set, which contained comics 6-11. The comics in "Lulu Goes Shopping" are in black and white, as were the Another Rainbow sets, with a full color cover featuring Irving Tripp's original art from issue number six. The AR set included color plates of all the covers, and a short feature in the comic, "Lulu's Diry," left out of the DH collections.

All of which is to say that Lulu lovers may still want to track down the AR sets which are far easier to find than the original comics, but at about ten bucks a book, Dark Horse has done a great job with Marge's Little Lulu, which is sure to win new fans and readers as it has every time it's been republished since Marge's first single panel comic in the Saturday Evening Post in 1935.

The genius of the comics is writer par excellence, John Stanley (Melvin Monster, Thirteen Going on Eighteen), but the back cover depicts the latest Lulu incarnation, CINAR's delightful cartoon series, seen on HBO, The Little Lulu Show, collected on DVD as "The Best of Little Lulu" (see my Amazon guide, "Cartoons Without Cable" for more information). "Dark Horse is really galloping" is how The HoLLywood Eclectern, the newsletter of all things Lulu, described the new Dark Horse series. The best kept secret in comic collecting, Ed Buchman publishes the journal as a labor of love and sends it out free to Lulu fans young and old. Write: "The HoLLywood Eclectern", PO Box 4215, Fullerton, California 92834.

This is classic. You'll laugh and laugh. Especially when Tubby takes Little Lulu treasure hunting in the lake.

I've brought home a great many different books in an attempt to get my seven-year old boy enthusiastic about reading.
Of all the books and comics he's examined, Little Lulu is the one that keeps him coming back for more. These are books he will pick up and read without prompting, and they can hold his attention for hours at a time.
At first I was surprised, thinking he would prefer some swashbuckling action hero, but then I read the stories more closely in an attempt to understand their appeal.
It turns out that my kid is a pretty good critic. These are solid, amusing stories with memorable, amusing characters. They beat the pants off 99% of the pre-packaged film/video game tie-ins that pass for kid's reading these days.
So hats off to Little Lulu, Dark Horse Publishing, and the simple appeal of a good, funny story well told.

I recently finished plowing through the collected paperback editions of the classic 1940s/1950s "Little Lulu" comics, and wanted to put in my vote... yes! yes! yes! True, it's a little disappointing that the strips are reprinted in black-&-white and not in the original color versions, but the real genius of these works is in the draftsmanship of artists John Stanley and Irving Tripp, and once you get onto their wavelength, even these half-size B&W reprints are a pure delight. They can say so much with such economy -- a single panel of Lulu's unbridled mischief can have you laughing your head off, and here, in this multi-volume collection, you've got a real treasure trove of some of the best graphic-art humor produced in the 20th Century. Great stuff, highly recommended, and major kudos to Dark Horse for making this artwork both available and affordable.