Society is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy of the Dawn of the American Comic Strip 1895-1915 Hardcover – October 24, 2013

Sunday Press has brought us huge tomes filled with the wondrous worlds of Winsor McCay, the visual poetry of Frank King, and the all-round incomparable "Krazy Kat" by Herriman. "Society is Nix," on the other hand, abandons all pretense and caution and hurls us straight into the multicolored mayhem that was the birth of the American comic strip.As Thierry Smolderen recounts in his introduction, prototypes of the comic strip appeared in the mid-19th century, from the visual narratives of A.B. Frost to the book-length pictorial stories of Swiss illustrator Rodolphe Topffer. With the advent of the Sunday color newspaper supplements in the 1890s, the stage was set for a group of artists of radical and rambunctious creativity to produce visual mayhem and farcical satire.In a few cases, it was glorified political cartooning, personnified by Richard Outcault's Yellow Kid who served as Hogan's Alley's interlocuter by way of chatty nightshirts. If the Kid reflected the Hearst editorial line, other characters like the Katzenjammer Kids, Little Jimmy, and Happy Hooligan raised riot just for the sheer fun of it.Among these riotous revelers, the Katzenjammers are the least offensive, even with their vaudeville house German. And that should give you fair warning about many of Hans und Fritz's contemporaries, who included monkey-faced Irish folk, blackface caricatures with huge lips, slanty-eyed Chinese, and enough hook-noses to catch a school of gefilte fish.The editors quote art spiegelman's warning that to expurgate such material would leave us with no comic strip history at all. Actually, it would leave us with very little popular culture history whatsoever. As the Sunday pages cut loose, the movies learned to be maniacal under the guidance of directors like Mack Sennett. Composers like Bud de Sylva wrote songs for Al Jolson that would never make it to the airwaves today.But there was underlying beautry beneath the mayhem. Outcault and his "Yellow Kid" successor, George Luks, created stunning visual compositions. Frederick Burr Opper had been creating masterful (and funny) single panels for years; the Sunday pages gave his powers full reign--and his characters, like Alfonse and Gaston, couldn't help but stray into the adjoining panels of Dirks' Katzenjammer Kids. Johnny Gruelle and James Swinnerton were also participants in the formative melee'. And just as Chaplin emerged from Sennett's Keystone and the musical comedy took flight from the realm of "The Black Crook," so too did genius and beauty arise from the anarchy of the Sunday strip: George Herriman's inexplicable "Krazy Kat," Lyonel Feininger's expressionistic "Kinder Kids," and Swinnerton's "Little Jimmy," which, like Herriman's Kat, found its mood in the American southwest. And more wonders came from the tempered talents of Winsor McCay, Cliff Sterrett, George McManus, and Frank King.The knockabout came first, and though some of it may make you wince at its cruelty, you'll also be awed by flashes of brilliance. This book is spectacular collection of the early comic strip, and a time capsule of popular entertainment at the dawn of the 20th century.

The new large, gorgeous tome, Society Is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy at the Dawn of the American Comic Strip 1895-1915 (edited by Peter Maresca and designed by Philippe Ghelmetti), opens a window in time with a cascading trove of re-discovered comics masterpieces so old they seem new again.When the roots of a popular art form take on new life, vital new art emerges -- and with smart, elaborate books like Society Is Nix arriving at what may be the height of the current revival of the American newspaper comic strip, we just might be headed for a comics Renaissance. The greatest value of a book like Society Is Nix is that it gives us the work of forgotten cartoonists of the distant past who were so different -- and so good -- that we are shocked into meeting their work in the moment, without any cultural preconceptions.There's plenty of amazing pages by acknowledged master sof the form: McCay, Herriman, Outcault, Opper, Swinnerton, etc. But there's a wealth of new discoveries by artists who time has forgotten, until now: Kate Carew, J. Cory Campbell, Percy Winterbottom (George Beckenbaugh), Gene Carr, Augustus Jansson, Alfred Freuh, A.B. Shults, to name just a few.The selection is impeccable. The restoration of the pages is near perfect. And the presentation is extraordinary -- for the simple reason that the pages are presented in their original broadsheet size of 21 inches by 16 inches. This is the size these works were created for. To date, most reprints of early American comics have presented them in greatly reduced format -- and something essential has been lost. The price tag for this book is hefty, but it's worth it -- the quality and content is the best available, and exceeds any expectations.Includes essays by Peter Maresca, Thierry Smoldern, Richard Samuel West, R.C. Harvey, Brian Walker, Alfredo Castelli, Bill Kartalopoulos, David Gerstein, and Paul C. Tumey (me).

Expected more familiar and better examples of comics, and was disappointed in only a token showing of Little Nemo. The full page format was probably a problem and limited the possibilities, but it was a great pleasure seeing them the size and in detail as they were intended. All in all I am happy to have it.

This is an act of treasuring comics by sunday press, who were terrific in assisting me in answering my questions.Essentially this book presents each page as a piece of art, better than what you would have read in a newspaper when they originally came out.I also love Sunday Press not catering to political correctness in comments such as a comic involving a black character in the typical blackface characterization of the period, BUT accurately states that the character was treated well in the comic, something that did not always happen, thus not trying to not offend those self-righteous egotisical lazy PC types who will see a drawing, jump to conclusions without even reading the comic and make a big "I am so offended" stink about it.Aside from this, the comments are very informative and add to the pleasure of reading themGood on Sunday Press

Comprei este livrão de quadrinhos na Amazon, ele faz companhia a outro livro chamado Forgotten Fantasy, ambos da editora americana Sunday Press.Quanto ao livro e ao preço está tudo ótimo, uma pena mesmo foi o ele ter vindo com um arranhão bem na capa! Ele foi embalado em um papel fino e além disso creio que o dano tenha sido causado durante o transporte, peço a querida Amazon que repense o embalamento de produtos desse porte pois eles são muito frágeis!Os outros livros que tenho da Sunday Press e que são nº1 de uma série, vieram dentro de uma caixa de papelão grosso e os seguintes não vieram não sei porque.No mais é isso, recomendo muito essas obras porque são a fina arte dos quadrinhos americanos!

Best book ever. There is a good reason for this big size. It is how it was ment. Amazing discoveries. Hopefully it is only the beginning.

Obviamente, este libro está pensado sobre todo para aquéllos a quienes les gusten los cómics que se publicaban los domingos, en la prensa estadounidense, a principios del siglo XX. Sin embargo, la variedad de estilos es tan rica, y la destreza de los dibujantes tan asombrosa, que también podría interesar a los aficionados al cómic y al dibujo en general. Las páginas se editan al tamaño original en que se publicaron y la reproducción de las líneas y los colores es la mejor que he visto hasta ahora, superando incluso a las de otras ediciones del propio Maresca, como "Forgotten fantasy" o "Little Nemo in Slumberland". El precio es caro, pero adecuado a la calidad del libro: encuadernación recia en tapa dura, con lomo de tela, y hojas de papel grueso. Por supuesto, está en inglés, pero tampoco las historias plantean excesivos problemas de comprensión.

El libro me parece una maravilla . Tengo los dos de "Little Nemo " y el "Forgotten ...." y con este hacen un rincon fantástico en mi biblioteca , esperando que Maresca y Sundays Press nos vuelvan a fascinar como a crios.

Como absolutamente todo lo que saca Peter Maresca, una exquisitez no ya para amantes del comic, sino para cualquier bibliófilo.