This long out of print collection from the formidable and inimitable Sunday Press is now back in print at last in this new, expanded edition co-published by Sunday Press and Fantagraphics!

And, gift-wise, makes for a generous gesture that is sure to be hit with comics aficionados of a historical and/or scholarly bent – as well as anyone who love classic comics (if they don't already have it, that is)!

Here's the Fanta hype up:

A revised and expanded edition of the Eisner-nominated book on the earliest American comics, with over 200 classic strips, by over 75 cartoonists: the “Founders of the Funnies.”

 

“Mit Dose Kids, SOCIETY IS NIX!” So said The Inspector about the Katzenjammer Kids. But he could have been speaking of all comic strips in their formative years in the early 1900s. From the very first color Sunday supplement, comics were a driving force in newspaper sales, offering a wild parody of the world and the culture found in the surrounding pages. Society didn't stand a chance!

These are the origins of the American comic strip, born at a time when there were no set styles or formats, when creators had the freedom to experiment, when artistic anarchy helped spawn a new medium. The few existing rules were broken, and new ones were created. Unique uses of layout and presentation of dialog and characters exploded on the pages in full color, showing new possibilities in graphic storytelling.

The genesis of comics is laid out in a dozen essays by the greatest in their field—historians like Thierry Smolderen, Brian Walker, Alfredo Castelli, Bill Kartalopoulos, Paul C. Tumey and others. And in the second, revised edition of this seminal collection: over 200 comic strips! The earliest comics by acknowledged greats like R. F. Outcault, George McManus, Winsor McCay, and George Herriman, along with creations of more than fifty other superb cartoonists, known and unknown. Collectively they are “The Founders of the Funnies”. The classic strips, most not printed in over 100 years, are presented in their original colors at the incredible oversized format Sunday Press is known for: all the better to see the comics that would inspire the next century of comics to come!

 

Praise

"Never thought anything like this could exist outside my dream life." — Art Spiegelman

"An essential primer on the Big Bang of comic strips that occurred at the turn of the last century." — The New York Times

"Peter Maresca's outsized and outlandish anthology shows just how sensational this newspaper art form was in its early years." — The New York Review of Books

"A mind-blowing portable museum retrospective of the raw, tangled ferocity and frustration that went into the making of America." — Chris Ware

"Full of surprises...curiously refreshing." — Steven Heller - The Atlantic

Pages:  168 |  Format:  Hardback |  Color:  Full-color |  Dimensions:  13.2" × 16.8" |  ISBN-13:  9798875000607

 

And anyone wanting to dig a little deeper should head over to Panels & Prose to read Steve Smith's informative write-up on it , HERE. 

HOLIDAY EARLY BIRD SHOPPER LIMITED TIME SPECIAL