Buy new:
$39.95$39.95
$4.99
delivery:
Feb 10 - 14
Ships from: Clover Press Sold by: Clover Press
Buy Used: $35.51
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
LOAC Essentials Volume 2: The Gumps - The Saga of Mary Gold Hardcover – April 9, 2013
Enhance your purchase
- In the late 1910s, Sidney Smith developed a formula of the daily strip that would make The Gumps one of the most popular comics of the 1920s and himself one of the richest cartoonists of his day. By the end of the decade Sidney Smith's The Gumps had secured a huge and loyal audience with a decade of melodrama, adventure, mystery, and comedy. So devoted were his readers, in fact, that they regularly wrote in to offer advice for his characters' love lives and business decisions and they generally treated the characters as friends and family members. In 1928-29, with the launching of what would be his most famous story, "The Saga of Mary Gold," Smith's relationship to his readers would be tested as never before. Its heartbreaking conclusion would change comics forever. Here for the first time since the story made headlines across America in the spring of 1929, IDW reprints the saga that Hogan's Alley magazine called "One of the Ten Biggest Events in Comics History" — a tale that has lost none of its power to captivate readers in the 21st Century.
- LOAC Essentials reprints, in yearly volumes, the rare early daily newspaper strips that are essential to comics history, seminal strips that are unique creations in their own right, while also significantly contributing to the advancement of the medium.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherIDW Publishing
- Publication dateApril 9, 2013
- Dimensions4.4 x 1.2 x 11.6 inches
- ISBN-101613775733
- ISBN-13978-1613775738
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Product details
- Publisher : IDW Publishing (April 9, 2013)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1613775733
- ISBN-13 : 978-1613775738
- Item Weight : 1.34 pounds
- Dimensions : 4.4 x 1.2 x 11.6 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,726,371 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,191 in Comic Strips (Books)
- #52,760 in Humor (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
But look beyond the art -- those odd blank eyes, the over-large hands, the exaggerated expressions -- and the differences begin to crop up. Where his Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News stablemates Milton Caniff and Al Capp made their mark in adventure and satire, Sidney Smith, creator of 'The Gumps', found his forte in another genre -- melodrama.
Being a Victorian -- he was born in 1877 -- Smith seems to have reached out for inspiration to the greatest of the Victorian novelists, Charles Dickens. (As would Smith's colleague Harold Gray.) Reading this book, which collects 'The Gumps' daily strips from May 1, 1928 through May 3, 1929, it is hard not to believe that Smith wasn't unconsciously influenced by 'The Old Curiosity Shop'.
Mary Gould is Smith's Nell Trent, Tom Carr is Kit Nubbles (right down to being framed for theft), Henry J. Ausstinn is Daniel Quilp (with the Victorian 'Betsy' turning into an equally long-suffering wife named 'Betty' in the American comic strip), and so forth. Most tellingly, both Mary Gould and Nell Trent will meet the same fate.
'The Old Curiosity Shop' was published as a serial, and the episode covering Nell's fate were awaited as eagerly, and were as much of a publishing sensation, as the 'Harry Potter' books. So, in its time, did the long tale in this book.
In an era when radio was a novelty and television all but unknown the daily newspaper strip was eagerly discussed across the country. 'The Saga of Mary Gould' inspired such an outcry that Governor Theodore Bilbo granted Tom Carr a full pardon and the Arkansas Senate adopted a resolution calling for justice to prevail (which Smith smartly included in the March 11, 1929 strip).
But what of the Gumps, the titular heroes of the strip? Well, the strip started on February 12, 1917 when the Gumps moved into a house where Smith's previous hero, Old Doc Yak (a goat!), had once lived. By 1928 Any Gump had moved from being the hero of the strip to being a raconteur, occasionally the device through which Smith uses to move the plot.
Jared Gardner has contributed a long, thoroughly absorbing, nineteen-page essay that appears at the front of the book, putting Sidney Smith as well as 'The Saga of Mary Gould' in perspective, showing us how important they were to the development of the newspaper strip as a medium. Gardner also contributes footnotes, clarifying, for instance, who Nellie Bly might be.
For readers who may not be familiar with the series, the Library of American Comics 'Essentials' is an intriguing line. Shorter than most titles --half the height of ' Complete Little Orphan Annie Volume 1 (Complete Little Orphan Annie) ' -- and printing just one strip to a page, the 'Essentials' publish a single year of a comic strip of historic or literary value.
The spine seems a bit 'bendy' to me but that said the first volume, ' LOAC Essentials 1: Baron Bean (Library of American Comics Essentials) ', is still holding up. And the Library of American Comics continues to include that aid to civilized reading, the ribbon marker.
If you are interested in the history of that thoroughly American artform called the newspaper comic strip or just want a good read you owe it to yourself to read this book. Throughly recommended!
Now if only LOAC would publish the early Thimble Theater strips by E.C. Segar. I'd be the first person to order that!
Top reviews from other countries
Das Vorwort von Jared Gardner umfasst ungefähr zwanzig Seiten und ist hilfreich illustriert, unter anderem auch mit Beispielen früherer Comic Strip-Serien aus der Feder von Sidney Smith (1877-1935). Der Rest des Buches bietet »The Gumps« pur, und zwar einen kompletten Jahrgang vom 1. Mai 1928 bis zum 3. Mai 1929. Pro Seite ist einer der täglichen schwarzweißen Strips abgedruckt. Die Restaurierung ist, soweit ich dies erkennen kann, sehr behutsam vorgenommen worden. Die Druckqualität ist einwandfrei.
»The Gumps« war in den 1920er ungeheuer erfolgreich. Es gab Zeichentrickfilme und zahlreiche Merchandising-Artikel. Sidney Smith galt damals als bestbezahlter Comic-Schöpfer. Der Gumps-Schöpfer starb 1935 bei einem Autounfall, als er sich – tragische Ironie des Schicksals – auf dem Rückweg von einer überaus günstig verlaufenen Vertragsverhandlung befand. »The Gumps« startete im Jahre 1917 und lief in der Hand anderer Zeichner – unter anderem Martin Landau! – noch bis 1959.
»The Gumps« hat die titelgebende Familie als zentrale Figuren. Die Gumps sind eine Durchschnittsfamilie mit reichem Onkel und Hausmädchen sowie mit Hund und Katze. Der Strip bietet eine Mischung aus Melodrama, Abenteuer und Komödie. Anfänglich bestand die Serie aus nicht zusammenhängenden Einzelgags, doch noch in den 1910er Jahren ging Smith dazu über, Fortsetzungsgeschichten zu erzählen.
Der vorliegende Band präsentiert eine abgeschlossene Geschichte: »The Saga of Mary Gold«. Mary Gold gehört zu einer neu zugezogenen Nachbarsfamilie, die die Gumps näher kennenlernen. Der Schluss der ›Saga‹ ist sehr außergewöhnlich (mehr wird nicht verraten), was dazu geführt hat, dass diese Geschichte bis heute als eine Art Vergleichsstück zitiert wird. In grafischer Hinsicht ist hier allerdings kein zweiter Winsor McCay oder George McManus zu entdecken. Smith' Stil ist handwerklich gut, zeittypisch und doch wiedererkennbar, aber als besonders virtuos würde ich ihn nicht bezeichnen.
Fazit: Ein Comic Strip, den zu lesen auch heute noch Vergnügen bereitet, wenn man bereit ist, sich auf die zeittypische Erzählweise einzulassen (was natürlich für jegliche klassische Literatur gilt). Wer sich intensiver für die Geschichte der Comics interessiert, wird hier etwas vorfinden, das zeigt, wie man in der Dekade vor ›Erfindung‹ der eigentlichen Abenteuer-Comics spannende Geschichten erzählt hat.

