You're looking at a beautiful, oversized hardcover (with dust jacket) first edition of:

A Smithsonian Book Of Comic-Book Comics (1981)

Presents selections from comic books from 1938 to 1955 that feature the adventures of characters such as Superman, Batman, Pogo, Captain Marvel, and Donald Duck

Review From Goodreads:
"This is a collection from 1981 of twenty-eight comic book stories originally published between 1938 and 1955. One of them is only one page long; the longest is thirty-three pages. Seventeen of them are primarily comic and five are dramatic (including super-hero adventures). The six stories featuring Plastic Man, Captain Marvel, and The Spirit are all comic adventure tales.
The book is divided into twelve sections, of which two are each about a specific character (Superman and Batman), one is about comics from a particular company (E. C.), and the rest are about specific characters and the artists who were the primary forces behind them. I was familiar with most of the characters; I don't recall reading Scribbly or Dr. Dimwit before, although I may have.
The tales of Superman and Batman (then known as "The Bat-Man") are so much a part of American (and probably international) culture that there is not much to say about them. The stories reprinted here are the first comic book stories about those characters. Surprisingly, the Superman tale has very little back-story and the Batman has none at all.
I was not around when most of these stories were first published and I don't remember Plastic Man, Captain Marvel, or The Spirit from my childhood, but I have read a few of their adventures previously. The ones appearing here are all highly imaginative. The design of the "fantasy" sequence in the 1941 story of The Spirit is very impressive; I can't recall seeing anything like it before. (However, the portrayal of Ebony, The Spirit's very caricatured African-American assistant, is unfortunate.)
The three purely dramatic stories that are not about super heroes are all from E.C. The introduction to that section of the book says that the initials originally stood for "Educational Comics," which was later changed to "Entertaining Comics." Two of the dramatic stories are set in Korea during the Korean War. The stories are "Air Burst" and "Corpse on the Imjin," both written and illustrated by Harvey Kurtzman. The drawing is raw, bordering on ugly, but effective. I think that both of these stories are quite good, unusually somber for comic books.
The E.C. story "Master Race," drawn by Bernard Krigstein, seems extraordinary to me. I grew up reading Dell, Harvey, Disney, and DC comic books, all pure entertainment. (I know that these companies printed more serious comics as well, but I seldom read them, with the occasional exception of DC's "Sergeant Rock.") This is a post-Holocaust drama, dealing with a former concentration camp commander and one of his former prisoners. This is far from being a "comic" book.
The other two E.C. stories are parodies from Mad. One is "Superduperman!," a parody of Superman comic books by the highly-regarded artist Wallace Wood. I very often love Wood's work; however, I dislike the cluttered drawing here. The story shows Superduperman battling Captain Marbles (based on Captain Marvel) and being rejected by the voluptuous (as many of Wood's portrayals of women were) reporter Lois Pain (based on Lois Lane). Some of the wall signs are funny and I like the ever-changing emblem on Superduperman's chest, but a lot of this I think is more silly than really funny.
The other Mad story is "Howdy Dooit," a parody by Bill Elder of the children's television show Howdy Doody. My favorite panel here is on the top left of page 324, in which three of the children in the audience have quietly changed into sheep. I think that most of this will make little sense to readers not old enough to remember the television show.
I recently read an entire book devoted to the work of George Carlson, represented here by three stories, all from Jingle Jangle Comics. The best of the three is titled "The Fashionable Fireman and the Soft-boiled Collar-button." All of them are very funny, very well-drawn, and impossible to summarize. Read these and any other Carlson comics you can find. (The book that I mentioned, by the way, is Perfect Nonsense: The Chaotic Comics and Goofy Games of George Carlson.)
Walt Kelly's stories of anthropomorphic animals living in the Okefenokee Swamp began in comic books but became truly famous as the wonderful comic strip "Pogo." The swamp adventures began in Animal Comics and then moved to another comic book, Pogo Possum. Many of the characters are the same as the ones in the comic strip, some of the gags are similar, but the look is very different. There are four "Pogo" tales here. One, "Albert Takes the Cake," is from Animal Comics from 1942. Pogo looks much more possum-like than he later became. However, the main character is a the only human being, Bumbazine, a young African-American boy; he did not appear in the later stories. The drawing is fine and funny, with good background details. This is the only entry in the book in which the dialogue is in both upper and lower case; in all the others, the dialogue is totally in upper case (although one of the "The Spirit" stories uses both cases for the narration). And then, oddly, the next three stories look vastly different both from the earlier version and from the later comic strip. The introduction to this section says, "Backgrounds are sparser"- a considerable understatement. The "Pogo" comic strip was renowned for the beauty of the drawing. To say that the drawing in these three stories is drab is to be very generous. They are funny but decidedly un-lovely.
The introduction to the chapter about "Scribbly" by Sheldon Mayer explains that the title character was "a would-be boy cartoonist." In the one "Scribbly" story shown in this book, Scribbly is a secondary character. The star is a costumed super-hero (sort of), the Red Tornado, who is actually Scribbly's neighbor, Mrs. Hunkel. This is played largely for laughs; the basis of the Red Tornado's costume appears to be a red flannel union suit, and the helmet is a cook pot with eye holes cut in it. I think that this is a better, funnier satire of super-heroes than the Wallace Wood story mentioned above.
Basil Wolverton has two entries in the book. One is a one-page slapstick feature titled "Dr. Dimwit." The doctor and his patient discuss the implement that the doctor should use to remove the patient's tonsils. They consider a pruning-hook, an ax, an egg-beater, a shovel, and a scythe.
The other Wolverton entry features Wolverton's variation of a super-hero, Powerhouse Pepper. Powerhouse is a generally peaceable man with a peculiar, small, bullet-shaped, entirely bald head. He is also incredibly strong. The story in the book has a Western setting. Powerhouse saves a town from the vile outlaw, Rawjaw McClaw. The story is filled with alliteration and rhyming dialogue. For example, when Powerhouse goes up against McClaw on a Western street, Powerhouse assures the citizens, "DON'T GET YOUR BLOOD IN A FLOOD, MEN! MAYBE I CAN HANDLE HIM!" A cowering bystander replies, "YO'RE PLUMB MAD, LAD! McCLAW WOULD CHAW YOUR JAW RAW WITH ONE PAW!" A sign behind Powerhouse says, "DON'T SAG ON THE MAIN DRAG." And that's just part of one panel.
My favorite sign in the story is coming from a spiny cactus, saying, "QUICK WATSON, THE NEEDLE!" Parents must have loved explaining the drug-addict joke to children.
The famous cartoonist Jules Feiffer said that he disliked Wolverton's work because it is "ugly." It is, I suppose, but distinctively and effectively so. It appears to me that Wolverton influenced a number of later cartoonists.
There is a long Walt Disney Donald Duck story by the great Carl Barks here. It is titled "Letter to Santa," and it comes from the first of the annual Walt Disney's Christmas Parade comic books from 1949. The story begins on Christmas Eve day, when Donald Duck realizes that he had forgotten to mail his three nephews' letter to Santa Claus. With not enough time left to get the letter to Santa, Donald opens the letter and finds that his nephews had only a single request, but that was for a steam shovel! Donald knows that a big piece of earth-moving equipment like a steam shovel would be very expensive, so he goes for help to his uncle, Scrooge McDuck, "richest tycoon in the universe."
This looks fantastic, with splendid, imaginative artwork. Panels are in many different shapes and some of the pages are adorned with small Christmas-themed insets, such as holly leaves, ringing bells, and a burning candle. There is rather more violence than I would have liked, although the sequence with battling steam shovels, one red and green, the other yellow, red, and blue, looks terrific. There are some fine jokes: Donald asks a man carrying a mountain of wrapped presents, "SAY, MISTER, HOW MUCH WOULD YOU SAY A STEAM SHOVEL COSTS?" And the reply is, "ABOUT AS MUCH AS A WIFE AND SIX KIDS!" The judge in night court is, appropriately, an owl. The "reindeer" pulling Donald and Scrooge in a rented sleigh is the world's most sway-backed horse, with antlers tied on to his head.
And one odd dash of realism- Donald walks by a building with a sign saying, "FLOP 25¢." That would likely be another thing for parents to need to explain.
I remember reading Little Lulu comic books when I was a child, but I don't recall them being as funny as the four stories reprinted here. Some of these would be my choices for the funniest entries in this book. They are not the prettiest comics; for one thing, Lulu's horrible hairstyle is a constant annoyance.
I think that the tale "The Spider Spins Again" is good, but the least impressive of these four. The oldest of the four is "At the Beach" from 1945. This looks significantly different from the later stories. For one thing, Lulu's friend Tubby is much chubbier than he later became. More importantly, almost every character in every picture has cheeks with round pink circles with white dots in the centers of the circles. Also, Lulu and Tubby are frequently drawn without mouths. But the spirit is very much Lulu-ish.
"Five Little Babies" is the longest of the Lulu stories. Lulu seeks revenge on the members of Tubby's club for humiliating her with a mean trick. Her plan was good and truly nasty. Lulu didn't know that none of the club members really had anything to do with it. The trick was played by the rich kid, Wilbur Van Snobbe, who was allowed to join the club later. There is nothing in the story to indicate that Lulu's "revenge" was unjustified. Morality aside, this is a good, amusing story. (In my copy, pages 168 and 169 are reversed.)
The best of the Little Lulu stories, and my choice for the funniest story in the book, is "The Little Rich Boy." Lulu is coerced into telling a story to Alvin, her unpleasant young neighbor. The story that she tells is very funny, the circumstances under which she tells it even more so. The tale that Lulu tells has two main characters, the Little Rich Boy and the Poor Little Girl, who looks exactly like a shabbily dressed version of Lulu. I will call the girl in the interior story Lulu¹.
Some of my favorite things in this story are Lulu¹ escaping from the dog pound and all the dogs then following her in subsequent panels, Lulu¹'s improbable jailbreak, the runaway Ferris Wheel rolling to oblivion, the herd of elephants at work cracking walnuts, and, especially, my pick for the funniest single panel in the book, the right hand picture in the third row on page 180, in which a crowd of people all yell at Lulu.

Some other information about the stories in the book:

▪️The "Superman" story was written by Jerry Siegel and illustrated by Joe Shuster.
▪️The "Batman" story is by Bob Kane.
▪️ "Plastic Man" was written and illustrated by Jack Cole.
▪️This "Captain Marvel" story was by C. C. Beck.
▪️All of these "Little Lulu" stories were written by John Stanley. Stanley also illustrated "At the Beach."
▪️The stories about "The Spirit" are by Will Eisner.

The introductions to each section were written by the editors of the book, Michael Barrier and Martin Williams. They contain a lot of valuable information.
There is a good bibliography, which is now somewhat out of date.
All of these comics and their creators deserve much more commentary than I can give here. They made generations of people happy. They still do."

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