Customer Reviews

Terr'ble Thompson

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To finally see the complete run of my little known and nearly forgotten

1950s comic strip so lovingly collected, restored and beautifully printed, is one of the great thrills of my life. I hope that all lovers of newspaper comic strips will enjoy what then seemed too far ahead of its time.

I've always been a big fan of newspaper strips, especially when they are collected into one big volume. Now imagine my delight at the discovery of Terr'ble Thompson, a nearly forgotten strip that was well ahead of its time when originally published over fifty years ago. Now, thanks to the good people at Fantagraphics the entire six-month run of Terr'ble Thompson has been re-mastered to its original glory and collected in this beautiful soft cover volume.

Now in truth, the strip was before my time, but the Terr'ble Thompson character would eventually morph into a character that I, and I'm sure many baby boomers were familiar with, Tom Terrific. Tom's animated adventures were a regular part of the Captain Kangaroo show. Tom and his magic thinking cap...boy does that take me back, not to mention age me!

The basic plot around Terr'ble Thompson was that he would have to help out various historical figures in need. These normally found "TT" battling his arch foe Mean Morgan who hated fun and little kids. TT is a rather rambunctious kid, an early forerunner of Calvin from `Calvin & Hobbes" and Jason Fox of Foxtrot. Terr'ble is able to think himself out of any jam it seems.

The storylines were usually played out over a number of days. The first adventure finds TT having to help Christopher Columbus whose crew is on the verge of a "mewt'ny" because they are in fear of a sea serpent. Next, TT has to help Cleopatra (Reluctantly as he doesn't like girls!) when her father is turning into a tree! The people of ancient Egypt are not fond of having a tree for a Pharaoh and want to run him off. Later, Terr'ble has to help out Santa Claus who is now refusing to believe in children because they don't believe in him!

The strips are filled with the kind of word mispronunciations that would make Norm Crosby proud. Creator Gene Deitch was, and still is a gifted cartoonist. His style of cartooning was clean and very angular, similar to the style used by Jay Ward on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show several years later. The strips look absolutely marvelous and as Deitch himself mentions in the introduction, this was no small feat as none of the original strips existed.

Terr'ble Thompson can now take his rightful place as one of the great comic strips and a great piece of 1950's Americana.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

Good stuff! Wow I just love Gene Deitch's style and it shines through brightly here. Wonderful characters rendered beautifully in pen and some color strips too. The publisher did a fantastic job with this and this book is a real treasure, even if you never heard of T'rrble Thompson before. It has that wonderful 50's style!

During its short life,the strip "Terr'ble Thompson" ran in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Until now, I was not aware that the strip ended, instead of the PD just dropping it. Hurrah! Now I can read and enjoy the full scope of "TT's" adventures! (In fact, in high school I had a friend whose last name was Thompson and who accepted the nickname "Terr'b" with aplomb, along with some bemusement!) Now I can prove I wasn't imagining things!