Does anyone still read and/or care about Doonesbury? It was the comicstrip of the 1970s, and still kept going strong through to the end of the twentieth century... but isn't much heard about these days. So, anyone interested in getting a quick education about this cultural landmark, its creator and its creation and/or who just wants to read some great comicstrips in super-deluxe hardcover form...have we got a deal for you!
Here's the hype from Yale University Press:
An exciting look at the artistic evolution of the iconic style of Doonesbury on the 40th anniversary of its publication.
Best known for his wry and incisive takes on American life and politics, Garry Trudeau is among the world’s most widely read cartoonists. Trudeau began shaping Doonesbury as an undergraduate contributor to the Yale Daily News in 1968.Today, the strip is syndicated to a daily readership of nearly 100 million.
Trudeau’s work has been anthologized before, but this is the first book to assess the art of the comic strip and the ways that Trudeau’s iconic style has evolved over the past four decades. Brian Walker, an expert on the history of comics, sheds light on Trudeau’s early influences as well as on his creative process, from research to pencil layouts to finished artwork. In addition to revealing how Doonesbury is crafted each week, the book also examines Trudeau’s magazine illustrations, animation drawings, posters, and product designs, as well as rare and previously unpublished works. Walker’s historical text is complemented by insightful commentary by Trudeau and his collaborators, Don Carleton, George Corsillo, and David Stanford, making this book appealing not only to Doonesbury’s many fans but also to those looking for an approach to the work of a master comic strip artist.
272 pages, 11 1/2 x 9 3/4
130 b/w + 360 color illus.
ISBN: 9780300154276
Cloth
Brian Walker organized the first major exhibition of Garry Trudeau’s work, The Doonesbury Retrospective, at the Museum of Cartoon Art in 1983. He has served as curator for more than sixty-five cartoon exhibitions and has written numerous books on comics including The Comics: The Complete Collection, The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: 75 Years of an American Legend.
This book's full title, The Nancy Show: Celebrating the Art of Ernie Bushmiller – A Catalogue Accompanying the Exhibition at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum – pretty much sums it up. For those of you who don't expect to be able to visit the exhibition in person, this horizontally formatted, 12" x 9", 152 page, flexicover volume does a great job of presenting it to you in the comfort of your reading chair. It features 72 big pages of high resolution scans of the original Bushmiller art along with 36 pages of full color reproductions of Nancy Sunday pages, plus plenty of pics of Nancy memorabilia and ephemera, an essay by exhibition curator Brian Walker and more – including a Special Bonus Gift: inserted in the rear of the book is a fold-out sheet of Nancy gift-wrapping paper, composed of a collage of dozens of classic Nancy panels, suitable for wrapping the book itself or anything else one might give to a Nancy lover, yes – BUT, you're more likely to want to frame it and hang it on the wall! So, with all that on offer – and for a quite reasonable price, we might add, even those who managed to make it to the exhibit in person are likely to want to take a copy home with them.
A must for all true Nancy fans!
After a long drought where we were all bereft of Nancy, with nothing whatsoever in print, 2024 proved to be the Year of Nancy. Now here's a chance to celebrate by giving the gift of Nancy with this special Copacetically curated three volume set:
Nancy & Sluggo's Guide to Life
and
all for one low price. Nancy!
Originally published in 1980 – and adapted from the 1974 exhibition of the same name – this legendary work has at last been brought back into print by New York Review Comics in a new edition complete with a new foreword by Chris Ware!
This 128 page black and white softcover assembled a visual dictionary of comics-specific terminoolgy that NYRC calls "a joyously exhaustive cheat sheet to key comics visuals that has been referenced and treasured by generations of cartoonists." Now at last you can join them!
