Old comics, "Nemo", "Gasoline Alley"

I'm running out of contemporary comics to buy, just in time to jump on the 'old comics' bandwagon. I've bought Brian Walker's Excellent "The Comics Before 1945" which is a fine introduction, along with Taschen's complete "Little Nemo in Slumberland" Collection.

While "Little Nemo" contains stunning visionary artwork, it can be a bit dull to actually READ... but I kinda new that in advance from earlier Danish editions. It's mostly to be treated as an 'ahead of its time' art-book.

But it's an entirely different case with another legendary series, "Gasoline Alley", which is now being collected in a series of nice and not partiocularly expensive hardcovers. (renamed "Walt and Skeezix" for copyright reasons) These books contain GORGEOUS art, but they're also really great to actually sit down and read.


"Gasoline Alley" is a gorgeous human soap opera of everyday life in the early 1920's America. I'd recommend this series to anyone who's interested in old Americana, comics or simply human life. The collections so far contain the daily black and white pages... there's also been released an ridiculously expensive over-sized hardcover of the sunday pages.. I assume a less expensive collection for us 'normal' folks will be out later, and I'll REALLY look forward to it. From the few sunday pages I've seen... well, basically Bill Watterson's "Calvin And Hobbes" sunday pages are NOTHING compared to this: