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."
Check out my other book lots and I'll combine shipping if you
add the items to your cart before paying, and let me know you're bidding
on multiple items.
Bid with confidence as I have 100% positive feedback for honest descriptions, secure packing and fast shipment.
Thanks for looking!