The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics [Hardcover]

Bill Blackbeard (Editor), Martin Williams (Editor), John Canaday (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1977

From the dust jacket: "The American newspaper comic strip (like jazz and the movies) is a major innovative and creative cultural accomplishment of The United States, one that has spread around the world....Included in this Smithsonian Collection are some of the most accomplished and critically notable strips from the Yellow Kid of 1896 - the first to attain definitive form - to contemporary works such as Peanuts, B.C. and Doonesbury....Most of the works chosen for this volume have intrinsic excellence and were popular with the readers of their time. They are also fun to read - and are meant to be enjoyed."

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press; 1st edition (June 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874741726
• ISBN-13: 978-0874741728
• Product Dimensions: 14.4 x 10.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #971,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Look at the History of Comic Strips, July 4, 2002

By 

AstroNerdBoy "AstroNerdBoy" (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (Hardcover)

I've always been a huge comic strip fan going back to the days when my dad was the press foreman and he let me (as a little kid) watch the "Sunday Funnies" get printed. Awesome! Fast forward to my high school years. I was bored and killing study hall time in the library when I stumbled upon this book.

The book is broken down by period going back to the first comic strips and working their way up to the early 70's. There's some text where the authors write to explain the different styles or comment on various strips but the real gem here are all of the comic strip samples in this book. Some strips (like Mickey Mouse) get many pages as they tell a whole story. Others don't get but a single sample strip, especially strips after the 1950's.

I love this book and will break it out from time-to-time just to read all of the classic strips like "Yellow Kid", "Buster Brown", "Katzenjammer Kids", "Mutt and Jeff", "Little Nemo in Slumberland", "Thimble Theater", "Mickey Mouse", "Krazy Kat", and many, many more.

It's a shame this book hasn't been re-published with new sections to include modern classics but oh well. If you can find it, it's well worth having!

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Indispensable Wonder, July 4, 2002

By 

Tarantula One (Darkest Gotham) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (Paperback)

Growing up in the 60s & 70s, I wasn't much enamored of comic strips appearing in the newspaper with a scant few exceptions. Newspaper comics were awfully stale if not comatose at the time; they smell even worse now. In light of this reality, thank God I found this book 20 years ago. To me, this mammoth oversized anthology of color and b/w strips (mostly vintage 1895-1950) was and is an education, a revelation and a door to a separate reality. Who knew that such fully realized, utterly compelling and unique works of art were once commonplace features in our daily and Sunday newspapers? Compiler Bill Blackbeard provides minimal but insightful commentary, which only underscores his good taste as the majority of SMITHSONIAN is devoted to the actual comics themselves. Wherever possible, he provides continuities of strips to give the reader not only a fuller flavor of the individual storylines and the era they appeared in, but each strip's particular dynamic with its audience. What's also impressive is the sheer number of titles sampled. Among the weightier excerpts are Popeye, Moon Mullins, Wash Tubbs/Capt. Easy, Barney Google, Polly and her Pals, Krazy Kat...but many of the lightly-skimmed properties are just as good. Set aside their enormous entertainment value and what you may find most impressive is how starkly individual each strip creator is; what ends up on the page is the sum total of one man's creative & emotional being, distorted through a prism of fantasy or slapstick or melodrama. Your net gain as reader: 336 pages of the kind of joyous, crazy, all-elbows-and-graceful-despite-it art that can only emerge from forms that the Arbiters of Taste don't take very seriously. Splendid as this book is the first time 'round, it continues to enrich you, always revealing more with every subsequent re-reading. Out of print for a while but readily available through the online auction services; I also hear it's being reissued soon. By the way, the other mandatory strip anthologies are the 'sequel' to this one (COMIC STRIP CENTURY), an important predecessor (Robinson's THE COMICS) and the entire run of Rick Marschall's NEMO magazine; happily, there is next to no duplication of strips reprinted between all of them (apparently the archivist's code of honor). If this book floors you like it did me, seek them out and flabbergast further.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Introduction to the classic strips, May 6, 2002

By 

Zack Davisson "japanreviewed" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (Hardcover)

The "Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics" is a giant, heavy hardcover book that is just bursting with great comic strips. We bought this as a present for my Granddad in 1984, but you can be sure that I got far more use out of it than he did. Every visit to their house had me pouring over these old comics.

Comic strips of the golden age where very different from the tiny, three panel strips we have today. Huge, multi-page full-color adventures were the norm. "Little Nemo in Slumberland" is a burst of eye-candy. Windsor McCay had imagination and talent. "Thimble Theater Staring Popeye" was another favorite of mine. E.C. Segar's Sailor is very different, and much improved, from the spinach-eather we have now.

Other great strips in here are "The Yellow Kid," "Gasoline Alley," "Barney Google," "Moon Mullins," "Buster Brown" and the list goes on. This book is a treasure.