source: historian Michael Barrier's blogAugust 27, 2009:
Classic Children's Comics (for Grownups, Too)
I've mentioned here a couple of times The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics, the compilation assembled by Art Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly, with a little help from a crew of superannuated funny-animal comic-book readers, me among them. It has just been published by Abrams, and you can order a copy from amazon.com by clicking on this link. I heartily recommend that you do so. In this age of bloody, super-serious, never-ending graphic novels, it's a delight to pick up a book filled with mostly short, mostly very funny stories that parents can enjoy along with their young children.
This is a wonderful book, beautifully reproduced (I wish my own Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics had turned out half as well), and distinguished by a lineup of stories that range from certified classics—three duck stories by Carl Barks, loads of Walt Kelly and John Stanley, and cameos by Harvey Kurtzman, Basil Wolverton, Jack Cole, and Jules Feiffer at their most kid-friendly—to the intriguingly odd. You might be familiar with "Intellectual Amos" by André LeBlanc, and I'd certainly heard of it (it was a backup feature in the Spirit weekly), but I can't remember ever reading one of those stories.
There's also a sampling of what you might call middle-of-the-road kids' comics, the short, formula-flavored stories that DC and ACG turned out in enormous quantities in the '40s and '50s. I'm afraid I'll never warm up to Sheldon Mayer, or to Nutsy Squirrel, or the Fox and the Crow, or...but it's good to have a chance to revisit opinions that, in my case, have been locked in place for decades. There's even one story each for Dennis the Menace and Little Archie. The weight of the book is so clearly tilted toward really good stuff that I can't work up any indignation about the more questionable calls; and there are, after all, people who will buy the book because Little Archie is in it. (The Harvey comics are missing entirely, though—a source of frustration to some, I'm sure, but not to me.)
Spiegelman and Mouly have contributed an excellent introduction to their book, and there are lots of evocative reproductions of comic-book covers and ads and such, all serving very well to summon up a lost four-color world that remains far more real to me than much of my everyday life when I was a child. I struggle to remember the name and face of my fifth-grade teacher, but I can tell you exactly where I was when I bought the October 1952 issue of Walt Disney's Comics & Stories, with the wonderful Barks story about Donald Duck's "hypno-gun" (included in the new book). The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics reminds me why it is not at all strange that my memories should have ordered themselves in that way.
There is, incidentally, one overlap with my Smithsonian Book: John Stanley's Little Lulu story, "Five Little Babies." Everyone involved want to avoid such duplication, but there seemed to be no other Lulu story that so perfectly exemplified Stanley's brilliance when he was working with that character.
Read several pages of "Classic Children's Comics" at Border's and found it enjoyable and interesting since it's like a time capsule of a bygone era with great illustration andcould be enjoyed from baby boomers, new generation of children, fans of vintage comics, etc.
Though one gripe would be the omission of Dell Looney Tunes & Merry Melodies comics. (Guessing there's not much of the very well known or comics based from animated cartoons due to rights from bigger companies or more fucused on comic book/strip characters)
There's still many notable characters from Dennis the Menace, Little Lulu, Droopy, Fox & Crow, Alice In Wonderland (not Disney), and even Donald Duck (probably the most recognizable & probably one of the most costly of the bunch).
I found "Little Archie" interesting since I wasn't aware of it, though would have to do research since I'm not sure if it started out that way and later became teenagers or were created for younger readers while the Archie comic appealed to teens.
Also great that it has a selection of Little Lulu stories (about three) since most of the the Dark Horse reprints are done in black & white (where the original comics were in color).
I'll probably get it when it's sold for a better price.
