Hey Kids! Comics! For Summer Reading
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Below are some comic strip and cartoon books scheduled for June 2024 release.
Images and links from a variety of publishers and outlets,
though ordering through your local comic shop or independent book store is a good idea.
Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies by Stan Mack (Village Voice review)
Sketchbook in hand, Stan Mack haunted the New York City environs, watching, listening, overhearing, and interviewing its inhabitants. He drew a comic strip every week based on what he saw and heard, famously using verbatim dialogue for his graphic dramatizations. A mixture of humor, spontaneity, serendipity, and weirdness…
Your Caption Has Been Selected by Lawrence Wood (review)
Packed with 175 of the magazine’s best cartoons and featuring a foreword by Bob Mankoff, former cartoon editor of The New Yorker and creator of the caption contest, Your Caption Has Been Selected takes you behind the scenes to learn about the contest’s history, the way it’s judged, and what it has to say about humor, creativity, and good writing. Lawrence reveals his own captioning process and shows readers how to generate the perfect string of words to get a laugh. Informative, funny, and just a little vulgar.
Well, This Is Me by Asher Perlman (Jason Chatfield recommends)
Well, This Is Me is the debut cartoon collection from Asher Perlman (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert), who NPR’s Scott Simon calls “one of today’s great New Yorker cartoonists.” A blend of Asher’s classics and never-before-seen material, this collection gives the people what they want: universal health care. Okay, not that, but something almost as important: a delightful book, chock-full of over 150 cartoons about everything from a dog’s encounter with a genie to the Tin Man’s trip to Jiffy Lube.
Alley Oop: The First Time-Travel Adventures: Dailies 1939–42 by V. T. Hamlin
Never before collected: four years of rare Alley Oop Daily Strips! Alley Oop’s time-traveling adventures begin! Join Alley as he fights in the Trojan War, joins Ulysses’ Odyssey, visits Cleopatra’s Egypt, sails the Spanish Main, plunges into World War II, and more! You’ve seen the Sunday pages; now enjoy the daily strips, all featuring the time-travel stories, from the very beginning. Beautifully restored from 1939-1942 in this oversize and impressively thick hardcover.
Alley Oop And The Brain Butcher by V. T. Hamlin
Alley and Oola go to Virginia City in the wild west of the 1800s to pan for gold. Then Alley’s brain is tampered with by mad scientist Dr. Seede and he’s…changed. Oola is sent off to medieval times on her own, but the new-brained Alley is going to join her and her sword swinging, armor suited new self. But will Alley keep himself out of Dr. Seede’s clutches… or will he lose his mind? Also featuring the quest for the perfect cup of prehistoric coffee in adventures back in Moo!
Smoothing the Jew by Jeffrey A. Marx
The turn of the nineteenth century in the United States saw the substantial influx of immigrants and a corresponding increase in anti-immigration and nativist tendencies among longer-settled Americans. Jewish immigrants were often the object of such animosity, being at once the object of admiration and anxiety for their perceived economic and social successes. One result was their frequent depiction in derogatory caricatures on the stage and in print.
Smoothing the Jew investigates how Jewish artists of the time attempted to “smooth over” these demeaning portrayals by focusing on the first Jewish comic strip published in English, Harry Hershfield’s Abie the Agent.
Rae the Doe Gets Booked by Olive Brinker
This book collects the first year of Rae the Doe comics, chronicling the life and times of Rae the Doe, from meeting her girlfriend Mimi to coming out as trans to unionizing a haunted house.
Rae the Doe: Act 2 by Olive Brinker
This book collects the latter half of Rae the Doe’s run as an independent webcomic, before it was picked up for syndication by King Features. Comics #201-400 can be found within this book, along with over ten book-exclusive bonus comics!
Rae the Doe: Third Time’s the Charm by Olive Brinker
… a printed collection of Rae the Doe comics from June 2020 to April 2022. The book begins with the comic’s syndicated debut with King Features and concludes with the “Little Women: Novel Tendency” storyline.
Night Stories: Folktales from Latin America by Liniers
Eisner Award winner LINIERS brings his exuberant cartooning style and irrepressible sense of fun to the spooky folktales of his childhood, telling three from across Latin America: the Iara, a mermaid who lures her love to her underwater domain; La Lechuza, an enormous owl who terrorizes a town after dark; and La Luz Mala, a spooky light that menaces gauchos on the pampas.
That’s Some Business You’re In by Bob Fingerman
… a career-spanning art book, brimming with content that even though old will be new to most readers. Plus, tons of recent art. It also is a damned good read, with a foreword by Bill Sienkiewicz, then starting with a detailed career memoir, and followed by individual sections highlighting and elaborating on specific topics and phases, from student years, to his time as “one of the usual gang of idiots” in MAD magazine, to his signature works like Minimum Wage, Recess Pieces and the more recent Dotty’s Inferno.
Prince Valiant Vol. 28: 1991-1992 by John Cullen Murphy and Cullen Murphy
n a quest in the Asian lands of Cathay, Prince Valiant encounters a fire-breathing mechanical dragon and the legendary adventurer Prester John. Armies converge, mountains crumble, and a father and son are reunited. Mordred escapes imprisonment and treacherously stabs Arn, who learns that Maeve is soon to give birth. Val discovers a lost colony and wrestles with a tusked whale off the coast of Greenland, but a spell overcomes the expedition on the Isle of Lost Youth.
Terry and the Pirates: The Master Collection Vol. 7: 1941 – Raven, Evermore by Milton Caniff
The saga continues in Terry and the Pirates Volume 7, reproduced from Milton Caniff’s personal set of color syndicate tabloid proofs! Embroiled in the guerilla struggle against the invader, Terry meets “Madame Lustre” (AKA Burma!) and matches wits German officers Kiel and Wolff. When Terry eventually reunites with Dude Hennick and Raven Sherman, the stage is set for one of the greatest stories in comics history, with Death waiting to strike unexpectedly.
Terry and the Pirates: The Master Collection Vol. 8: 1942 – A World at War by Milton Caniff
The saga continues in Terry and the Pirates Volume 8, reproduced from Milton Caniff’s personal set of color syndicate tabloid proofs! Pat Ryan’s bittersweet reunion with the entire Sandhurst family—including young daughter Merrily—is cut short when they are captured and placed in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Even worse, human weasel Tony Sandhurst is revealed as an Axis conspirator! Pat revs up an escape for Normandie, Merrily, and himself, but their path to freedom intersects with the Dragon Lady.
Altatude Volume One: The First Five Years by Kate Isenberg, Lars Kenseth, and Phil Witte, others
Cartoons have been an essential part of Alta Journal from the beginning. Laugh along with the best jokes about life in California and the West from the magazine’s first five years. Perfect for a desert island, a psychiatrist’s waiting room, or the giant desk in your boss’s office.
Classic Sci-Fi Comics Vol 7 Wolverton by Basil Wolverton
Collects some of Wolverton’s very earliest and finest work, including the ultra-rare Space Patrol stories from Amazing Mystery Funnies (Centaur, 1939-40) and the legendary Spacehawk from Target Comics (Novelty, 1940-41). Plus the modern key issues of Weird Tales of the Future (June-September 1952).
Hurricane Nancy by Nancy Burton
Nancy Burton was among the earliest underground cartoonists, creating comic strips that appeared in The East Village Other (“Gentle’s Tripout”) and Gothic Blimp Works (“Busy Boxes”) in 1966. Under the pen names “Panzika” and “Nancy Kalish” and most importantly, “Hurricane Nancy,” she contributed to many notable underground comix including It Ain’t Me, Babe. Drawing on abstract expressionism, art nouveau and formline art, working in parallel to the psychedelic art movement…
Comics 1964-2024 by Thierry Groensteen
From the mid-1960s, the world of comics rapidly evolved into a highly creative art form for a sophisticated readership: in France, the magazine Hara-Kiri provided new terrains for graphical humour, while the adventures of Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella were published in albums by Éric Losfeld; the launch in Japan of Garo in 1964, an avant-garde monthly, presented the concept of auteur comics; and the release of Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix in 1968 established his reputation as the leader of the underground comics movement in the United States.
Comics Revue Presents June 2024
Complete in this issue: Buz Sawyer by Roy Crane, Rick O’Shay by Stan Lynde, Sir Bagby by R&D Hackney, and Augusta by Angus McGill & Dominic Poelsma. 19 pages of color Sunday pages featuring Casey Ruggles by Warren Tufts, Flash Gordon by Mac Raboy and Dan Barry, Gasoline Alley by Dick Moores, Alley Oop by V. T. Hamlin, The Phantom by Lee Falk and Sy Barry, Steve Canyon by Milton Caniff, plus much more in black and white.
The Complete Betty Brown, Ph.G. by Zack Mosley, Boody Rogers, and Grant Powers with Tom Heintjes
Collected for the first time, this book compiles the entire run (1934-1948) of the comic strip “Betty Brown, Ph.G.,” the story of the first woman in comics with an advanced degree! Enjoy the triumphs and tribulations of pharmacist Betty Brown as she operates her drug store in the face of all manner of adversity, including drug counterfeiters, con men, ruthless retail competitors, mobsters, and more!
More print on demand from Lulu:
Smitty The Flying Office Boy by Walter Berndt
Toonerville Folks, 1935 by Fontaine Fox
The Lost Worlds of George Metzger by George Metzger
George Metzger’s comics stand out for their captivating combination of high fantasy and science fiction, his prescient views of climate change and political chicanery — and, just when you need it, the right touch of whimsy and imaginative insight. Explore a feudal landscape in steam-powered vehicles, soar the skies in anachronistic airships and hitchhike back to nature with the hippies. It’s all here in this long-awaited anthology of George Metzger’s most iconic (and idiosyncratic) comics creations — including two never-before-seen stories rediscovered after missing for decades!
featured image: Priscilla’s Pop by Al Vermeer © NEA
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