Well, first there was the Complete Peanuts, and now there's the Complete Gasoline Alley.  This volume collects only the dailes, due to the fact that the Sundays were gigantic and designed as an organic whole and so not suitable to be broken down and squeezed into this book's format (Many fine examples of the early Gasoline Alley Sunday pages are available in Drawn & Quarterly Volume Three and Volume Four, and one Sunday is reproduced here, just to give you a taste.)  That said, this book, lovingly designed by Chris Ware -- think McSweeney's #13, only not quite as elaborate -- is, from a production standpoint, a true work of art.  The book begins on January 1, 1921, several years into the the strip's continuity, but just before baby Skeezix is discovered on Walt's doorstep and so a perfect place to start the generational saga that Gasoline Alley was to become.  The introductory notes and appendix are expansive, illustrated and accompanied by many, many rare photographs heretofore unseen by just about anyone outside the King clan.   This volume  -- like those in the Complete Peanuts -- contains two complete years, 1921 & 1922 in this case, but with the difference that there are only two strips per page, instead of three, accurately reflecting the significantly larger size that comic strips were printed at during the time these strips originally appeared, compared to the Peanuts strips that began almost exactly thirty years later.   While it's pretty safe to say that Gasoline Alley fans will be in seventh heaven while working their way through this volume, we believe that anyone interested in the early days of American comics strips should at least pick this book up and take a look at it.

These strips are now all 100 years old!