As has been noted twice before on this blog (see here and here), a color Sunday version of Crockett Johnson‘s Barnaby ran from 1946 to 1948. Â Courtesy of Colin Myers, here’s a full-page one from the winter of 1948. Â Though it’s undated, “winter” would have to be January or February because the color Barnaby concluded…
Inspired by BoingBoing’s notice of my post on Syd Hoff’s leftist cartoons, I’m sharing another letter from the late Mr. Hoff, along with a cartoon from 1939. As those who remember his first letter to me might recall, he and I corresponded – and spoke over the phone a few times – when I was working on…
The first promotional flyer for The Complete Barnaby is here.  And no, the strips you see on it are not of the resolution that you’ll experience in the book itself.  Fantagraphics is still working on cleaning up the scans.  But, at least, a hazy glimpse of what’s to come… in June 2012! Here’s a pdf: Complete…
This piece appeared in Comic Art in 2004.  As the magazine is now (sadly) defunct, I’m posting the article here.  Until The Purple Crayon and a Hole to Dig: The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss appears in 2012, this essay is the most thorough account of Johnson’s life available.  Enjoy! Philip Nel, “Crockett Johnson and…
To support President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1944 re-election campaign, Syd Hoff, Crockett Johnson, Lynd Ward, Hugo Gellert, William Gropper, and fourteen other artists illustrated this booklet. The text is FDR’s speech made before the Teamsters Union on September 23rd, 1944 – also known as the “Fala speech,” since it features his dog, Fala. Here is…
A dog. A bug. A walk around the block. From this simple premise comes one of the great picture contemporary picture books – and, while we’re on the subject, great picture books, period. With a spare, clean design and plenty of humor, Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash’s Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug (2007) is a pleasure…
As a follow-up to Saturday’s post (featuring Crockett Johnson’s Little Man with the Eyes strip), here are a few more of Johnson‘s Little Man comics, starting with one for April Fools Day, 1941. I was pleased to see Mark Newgarden share the original post on Facebook because — as I was writing the original post —…
He’s famous for Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) and the comic strip Barnaby (1942-1952), but Crockett Johnson wrote an earlier strip – one that was popular enough to feature in a series of Ford advertisements in the late 1940s.  Popularly known as The Little Man with the Eyes, Johnson’s strip ran in Collier’s from March…
When you wonder whether there’s a higher percentage of dunderheads in our political discourse (and, these days, who doesn’t?), a little perspective may be of help. In September 1942, Alfred A. Knopf published The Illustrious Dunderheads, edited by Rex Stout and illustrated by William Gropper. As Frank Sullivan writes in his introduction, “the book is…
“Barnaby exclusively in the Chicago Sun!” Here’s a photo of a Chicago Sun delivery truck in the 1940s. The occasion for sharing the photo is the quest for original Barnaby strips! Â As readers of this blog know, Eric Reynolds and I are co-editing The Complete Barnaby for Fantagraphics. Â We’re currently working on gathering strips from…
