An occasional series highlighting a favourite item from the collection.

Forgotten fantasy, Sunday comics 1900-1915 : visions from Lyonel Feininger, Winsor McCay and many more: edited by Peter Maresca

Sunday Press Books, 2011

 

Publisher Peter Maresca through his remarkable Sunday Press has been doing some quite extraordinary work in the rediscovery and preservation of American newspaper comic strips dating back to the early years of the 20th century. This unbelievably lovely (and huge!) volume is a visual delight, containing as it does long forgotten strips from well known masters such as Winsor McCay and Lyonal Feininger, along with lesser known (at least to me) artists such as Henry Grant Dart (a wonderful strip called The Explorigator), Johnny Gruelle (Mr Twee Deedle) and Charles Forbell (Naughty Pete), to name just a few.

“At a time when the comics were new, when formulas and constraints were years away, the creators—a mixture of cartoonists, illustrators and fine artists—were free to let their imaginations soar. With a combined heritage of the 19th century creations of science fiction and children’s stories, the pages collected here represent a unique sub-genre of comics, one that appeared at the dawn of the comic strip, then after not much more than a decade, all but vanished. Gone, but, if we can help it, not forgotten.”

 

The Explorigator by Henry Grant Dart

 

 

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