Quantity:

Express Checkout with PayPhrase

What's this? | Create PayPhrase

More Buying Choices

17 used & new from $2.50

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

Share with Friends

Share your own customer images

Search inside another edition of this book

Tell the Publisher! I�d like to read this book on Kindle Don�t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.

Dugan Under Ground: A Novel [BARGAIN PRICE] (Hardcover)

~ Tom De Haven (Author) "In late September 1960, during another one of those wear-a-tie cocktail parties that somebody, some couple, in our little circle liked to host four to..." (more)
Key Phrases: yellow wallet, bald kid, drawing comics, Derby Dugan, Roy Looby, Uncle Neil (more...)

3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

List Price:	$25.00
Price:	$3.41 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save:	$21.59 (86%)
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Want it delivered Friday, November 13? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

9 new from $2.50 8 used from $2.54

This is a bargain book and quantities are limited. Bargain books are new but could include a small mark from the publisher and an Amazon.com price sticker identifying them as such. See details.

Formats		Amazon Price	New from	Used from
Hardcover, Bargain Price $3.41 In Stock. Published September 29, 2001	Hardcover, Bargain Price	$3.41	$2.50	$2.54
	See # more hardcovers
	Show fewer hardcovers
Paperback, Bargain Price $0.86 In Stock. Published November 8, 2002	Paperback, Bargain Price	$0.86	$0.86	$0.95
	See # more paperbacks
	Show fewer paperbacks

Frequently Bought Together

Special Offers and Product Promotions

Explore more great deals on 1000's of titles in our Bargain Book store.

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Funny Papers: A Novel

by Tom De Haven

4.0 out of 5 stars (3)

It's Superman!: A Novel

by Tom De Haven

4.1 out of 5 stars (16) $10.20

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

by David Hajdu

4.4 out of 5 stars (43) $10.40

Asterios Polyp

by David Mazzucchelli

4.5 out of 5 stars (33) $19.77

The Best American Comics 2007

by Anne Elizabeth Moore

3.4 out of 5 stars (9) $14.96

› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The ageless Derby Dugan, comic-strip kid, is back, complete with magic yellow wallet and Fuzzy the talking dog, in this entertaining sequel to Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies. Dugan, passed from artist to artist like a cursed heirloom, has met a hard road in the 1960s, as the hobo adventures that carried him through the Depression and the war years aren't playing to the Kennedy-era nuclear family. Candy Biggs, his current artist (who only received Dugan after being stabbed in the chest with a pencil by his previous creator), drinks his way through Dugan's decline, watching his beloved comic strip vanish from one newspaper after another. Candy's only solace is teaching the Way of the Comic Artist to Roy Looby, a weird, talented neighborhood boy, and his kid brother Nick. In Roy's hand, Dugan morphs into the Imp Eugene, a randy roustabout who epitomizes the late-'60s independent comix craze, smoking dope and gallivanting with chicken-headed busty women. Roy moves to San Francisco and becomes an artist icon, bolstering his fame by disappearing for weeks at a time to produce Eugene's new adventures. Nick, ever the suffering Salieri to Roy's Mozart, is left behind in New Jersey with Roy's abandoned wife and young son. Finally, Nick, who narrates most of the novel, sets off in pursuit of his brother, trying to lay his own claim to Eugene's psychedelic world. This is a nostalgic romp through the funny-book business, as well as a compelling look at the people who struggle to make art out of four-color panels.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-winning Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) wasn't the first novel to depict the bygone world of newspaper comics. De Haven's new novel concludes a trilogy tracing the trajectory of twentieth-century America by portraying the successive creators of a long-running comic strip, "Derby Dugan." In this volume, newspaper comics have entered their decline, and Ed Biggs' best efforts can't prevent the strip's cancellation. Bitter and disillusioned, Biggs discovers teenage cartoonist Roy Looby and pins his hopes for resuscitating Derby on him. But the misanthropic and eccentric Looby, obviously modeled on R. Crumb, has other ideas. He heads for San Francisco and becomes the leading figure in underground comics. By now the saga of Derby, like the comics medium itself, has lost some of its steam. Hippie Haight-Ashbury and suburban Connecticut, where the newspaper strip artists live, lack the romanticism of the New York City setting of this book's predecessors. What remains, though, is the poignancy of the cartoonists' love for a medium that the rest of society has brushed aside. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Hardcover: 320 pages
ISBN-10: 0805057412
ASIN: B0000C7GF5
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,243,261 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.

First Sentence:
In late September 1960, during another one of those wear-a-tie cocktail parties that somebody, some couple, in our little circle liked to host four to sevenish on Sunday afternoons, a cartoonist friend offered me this piece of advice: "Kill the kid," he said, "keep the dog." Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
yellow wallet, bald kid, drawing comics

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Derby Dugan, Roy Looby, Uncle Neil, Candy Biggs, Nick Looby, Buddy Lydecker, Dan Sharkey, New York, The Last Eugene, Professor Clark, Dick Macdonald, Jersey City, Glen Tiner, San Francisco, Joel Clark, Bill Skeeter, Cora Guirl, Joe D'Emilio, Lazy Galoot, New Jersey, King Features, Jesus Christ, Walter Geebus, Mary Laudermilch, Victor Zits

New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats

Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 21 books:

Jane Eyre (New Casebooks) by Heather Glen on page 203
R. Crumb's Fritz the Cat by Robert Crumb on page 75
Dugan Under Ground: A Novel by Tom De Haven on page 285
The Last Human (Chronicles of the King's Tramp, Book 3) by Tom De Haven in Front Matter
Walker of Worlds: Chronicles of the King's Tramp, Book 1 by Tom De Haven in Front Matter

See all 21 books this book cites

3 books cite this book:

Dugan Under Ground: A Novel by Tom De Haven in Front Matter, and page 283
Paging New Jersey: A Literary Guide to the Garden State by James F. Broderick on page 111
Funny Papers: A Novel by Tom De Haven in Front Matter

Books on Related Topics (learn more)

Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies by Tom De Haven

Discusses:

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	60% buy the item featured on this page: Dugan Under Ground: A Novel 3.7 out of 5 stars (3) $3.41
	18% buy Funny Papers: A Novel 4.0 out of 5 stars (3)
	14% buy It's Superman!: A Novel 4.1 out of 5 stars (16) $10.20
	6% buy Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies (Niagara Large Print Hardcovers) 4.2 out of 5 stars (5) $29.50

Explore similar items

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews

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

Average Customer Review

3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comix Americanus from Walter Geebus to Roy Looby, January 31, 2002

By	W. Risley - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Dugan Under Ground: A Novel (Hardcover)

'Dugan Under Ground' is a wonderful novel which focuses on the underground comix milieu of the late '60's and early '70's, but covers far more ground in times before and after. It begins with the story of Ed 'Candy' Biggs, his betrayal-ridden personal life, and his trajectory from desperation to success and failure in his career as the inheritor of a classic newspaper strip, 'Derby Dugan.'

Through an odd sequence of events, Biggs takes on a young and brilliant protege, Roy Looby, a character very roughly based on R. Crumb. As Roy's sensibility and fame develop wildly, he's pursued by several fascinating characters, including his resentful and adoring brother who detests and delights in his role as the 'inker' of Roy's demented comix; an ineffectual and obsessive comix fan who becomes a financially hopeless publisher and quasi-academic promoter of comix-as-art; and a cynical hippie vixen whose identity shifts gears repeatedly throughout the chase. The novel itself becomes kaleidoscopic as it barrels on to its heartbreaking finish.

'DUG' will appeal especially to readers interested in the history of comics, of the underground scene in particular, to admirers of Crumb and of the Terry Zwigoff film on Crumb and his family (don't expect the Loobys to be just the same, though!) As a portrait of grand hopes and bitter disappointments in the America of the '50's, '60's and beyond, it stands beside works like 'Vineland' by Thomas Pynchon and 'Underworld' by Don DeLillo. I thought it was great!

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost Great, December 23, 2002

By	Sherry Chiger "schiger" (New Rochelle, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Dugan Under Ground: A Novel (Hardcover)

Usually the final book in a trilogy adds resonance to the entire series. In this case, readers may enjoy Dugan Under Ground better if they haven't yet read its predecessors--in particular, Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, the second book in the series. Dugan Under Ground is a fun, vibrant romp, full of wonderful period detail. But the characters don't resonate the way characters in an exceptional tale do--or as they do in Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies.
To put it another way: If you read Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, you'll laugh and you'll cry. If you read Dugan Under Ground, you'll laugh. Which in and of itself isn't a terrible thing.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars sadly, not nearly as good as Derby Dugan's Depression Funnie, October 10, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Dugan Under Ground: A Novel (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed this author's last book but this one has the feeling of needing a strong editor to tell the author that some of his ideas need to be fleshed out, others tossed entirely, and that he needs to go back in and get the thing from its draft-like into a real novel.
"Under Ground" is kind of a mishmash sequel to DD's Depression Funnies, and takes place in various times up to the present. Many of the characters clearly based on real-life pop icons, the obviousness of this seems to make the author think is enough to justify not developing the characters past a few recognisable mannerisms. This book also rides heavily on the coattails of the previous book, strangely assuming that the Dugan cartoon character from the 1920's -- rather than any human characters -- is interesting enough to support these new, poorly concieved human characters from the 1950's through the present.
I really hate to pan this book because DDDF was so well written and enjoyable, but I'm putting it down 3/4 of the way through and not anticipating picking it up again.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 3 customer reviews...

.jsOffDisplayBlock { display: block; } .jsOffDisplayInline { display: inline; } .jsOffVisibility { visibility: visible; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jsOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jqOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jqOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jqOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jqOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jqOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; }