The Great Comic Book Heroes
From Fantagraphics here is Jules Feiffer's long out-of-print and seminal essay of comics criticism, The Great Comic Book Heroes, in a compact and affordable size. In 1965, Feiffer wrote what is arguably the first critical history of the comic book superheroes of the late 1930s and early 1940s, including Plastic Man, Batman, Superman, The Spirit and others. In the book, Feiffer writes about the unique place of comics in the space between high and low art and the power that this space offers both the creator and the reader. Out of print for over 40 years, The Great Comic Book Heroes is widely acknowledged to be the first book to analyze the juvenile medium of superhero comics in a critical manner, but without denying the hold such works have over readers of all ages. Feiffer discusses the role that the patriotic superhero played during World War II in shaping the public spirit of civilians and soldiers, as well as the escapist power these stories held over America. Jules Feiffer assisted Will Eisner on The Spirit and is a cartoonist in his own right. he has also written plays and movie scripts.
6x9, 80 pages, softcover. ... $8.95

The Comics
This trailblazing survey of an art form preferred by the masses was the pioneer study of the subject. It shows the evolution and subgenres of the comics from The Yellow Kid in 1895 through the first decade of the modern comic book in the 1940s. Written by Colton Waugh and first published in 1947 and long out of print, this is considered by diehard aficionados of the comics as the best book ever written on the subject, and not just because it was the first. In this far-reaching study Coulton Waugh set down information that is now common lore, that the comics are revealing reflectors of society. For general readers and scholars alike, this new edition has a comprehensive index and an introduction by M. Thomas Inge, the notable scholar of popular culture and author of Comics as Culture. Coulton Waugh, who was born into an artistic family, was one of the main artists who worked on the famous Dickie Dare strip, created by Milton Caniff. Waugh did the strip for more than 20 years - from 1933 until 1957. In 1945, he created Hank, which only ran a short time. From 1947 on, Coulton Waugh divided his time between comics, painting and teaching.
6x9, 364 pages, softcover. ... $25.00

Little Nemo 1905-1914
This Taschen book adequately reprints the first run of Winsor McCay's seminal comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland. Little Nemo is a 9-year old who drifts off to sleep each night only to be transported to Slumberland, a hallucinogenic world of circus performers, royal court attendants, exotic personages of all stripe, and animals both tame and wild. McCay worked on an epic scale. Each strip ran to dozens of dialog baloons and hundreds of clearly rendered people and things, and often involved a half dozen characters or more. The most notable denizen of Slumberland other than Nemo is Flip, Nemo's arch-nemesis, who is set on nothing more than casting Nemo out of Slumberland by tricking him into waking up. The stories are scary in the amorphous manner of dreams -- characters grow large and walk over cities, or so small they are dwarfed by raspberries, inducing a dreamlike sence of vertigo and plasticity. Another recurring dream-like theme is flight, effected by baloons, stars, giant dragonflies or even Nemo's own out-of-control bed. The strips, originally filling a 15x23 inch newspaper page, are perhaps the most intricate and well rendered comics ever to be produced. Each panel is exquisitely composed and could stand on its own as a compelling work of graphic art, drawn with a beautiful art nouveau line and a rainbow pastel palette that makes one wonder what they knew about printing comics in 1905 that's been since forgotten. Although numbered for readers at the time, McKay's control of flow leaves no doubt as to the order of panels in the mind of the modern comic entusiast; he would routinely stretch time and space, and think nothing of propelling action from one panel to the next -- tricks in the bag of every modern comic artist. 10x13, 432 full color pages, hardcover. ... $29.99

Comic Strip Masterpieces
This full-color 11" x 17" tabloid showcases some of the very finest Gasoline Alley, Dick Tracy, Krazy Kat, Little Nemo in Slumberland, Steve Canyon, Terry and the Pirates, Dennis the Menace, Flash Gordon, Yellow Kid, Little Orphan Annie, Peanuts and Popeye strips. How can you go wrong? Designed like an old-time classic newspaper comic strip supplement, Comic Strip Masterpieces features superb reproductions, including many stunning full-color Sunday pages! Also included are biographical notes on the cartoonists, a checklist of classic comic strip reprints, and more. Reading Comic Strip Masterpieces will be like traveling back in time to an era when comic strips were actually good!
11x17, full color tabloid. $1.00

He Done Her Wrong
By Milt Gross. First published in 1930, the famously wordless He Done Her Wrong is Milt Gross' graphic masterpiece, the result of his prior collaboration with Charlie Chaplin on the 1928 silent-era film classic The Circus. Sharing the same goofy, over-the-top comic mayhem that was Chaplin's trademark, and preceding the expressive, cartoony art style of MAD Magazine legend Harvey Kurtzman, all of He Done Her Wrong's hilarious slapstick, tragic heartbreak, heroism and villainy, character development, high emotions and raucous thrills somehow manages to take place, astonishingly, without a single word of text, or conversation, or even a footnote. 7x7, 248 pages, black & white illustrations, paperbound. ...WAS $16.95, NOW ON SALE $13.95