Customer Reviews

The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics

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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!

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.

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.

One day I had to go to the library to get a book from my 7th grade reading list and I saw this huge book of comics and I just had to take it out. I read it probably 100 times .It became my favorite book.My favorite comics were Popeye, Gasoline Alley, The Smythes,and Krazy Kat. I love this book and you will to. So my advice to you is if you love comics you will love this book!

This is a beautifully packaged collection of some of the very best comic-strip art from the first half of the 20th century (and a little more). The reproduction is very good, the introductory material is useful and informative and the selection of strips is first rate.

In particular, having collected several of these strips in other formats over the years (e.g. "Little Nemo", "Polly and Her Pals" and "Krazy Kat"), I can say that they've selected many of my personal favorites for inclusion here.

As I write this, this book is basically in "remainder" status meaning that it is available brand new for very cheap, but has gone out of print in hardcover - pick it up while you can!

This archive and commentary takes the reader from the earliest comics of the 1800s through the heydays of the 1920s and 30s, and on to the mid 70s. Blackbeard's insightful comments, the excellent reproductions, and the thoughtful layout all make this book a "must have" for any comic collector or fanatic reader. If you don't have a copy, you're missing out!

A wonderful walk down Memory Lane! I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to revisit their childhood.

not a longwinded anecdote about an age by someone who wasnt a part of it but the strips, sundays and dalies, from the turn of the century heavy into the forties with a quick touch of fifties to top it off. has the prestige and backing of the smithsonian, so the selection is incredible, complete storylines are presented, color, large format, things youve never seen before and will never see again. thimble theatre, krazy kat, flash gordon, ally oop, mutt and jeff, king aroo, dasheil hammet, rube goldberg, walt disney, dick tracy, little orphan annie, white boy, li'l abner, terry and the pirates, winsor mckay including little nemo sundays, a large number of teens and twenties strips i cant name, a large number of thirties and forties strips i cannot name, i am in awe of this book. i am a comic maker and reader and this book is absolutely flooring.

I'm not going to comment much about the content of the book as that has already been well served by others and I agree with the raving reviews. My hat's off to the editors for their selections, but I also had to have a magnifying glass to my eye to read the book. I realize this is mostly due to the reproductive nature of comics; originally, some of the comics took up a whole sheet of newspaper so reproducing them at their original size in any book would prove difficult, if not impossible. The size of the book is impressive, but not seeing a McCay work in its intended full size is a bit of a let down, not to mention at times illegible.

Still, I don't want to discourage anyone from buying this book, it's as good as it gets.

I am amazed at what this book now costs for the hardcover edition....$70.00 I only paid $14.99 at my local Half Price Books and it's in New Condition!!!!