Hey Kids! Comics! Maybe a NYT Top 100?

Below are some comic strip and cartoon books scheduled for July 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.

Flash Gordon: Classic Collection Vol.1 – Hardcover by Don Moore and Alex Raymond

Science fiction’s most enduring icon Flash Gordon returns in a newly-restored edition, collecting his earliest adventures with Dale Arden and Dr. Hans Zarkov on the mysterious planet Mongo. There they’ll encounter strange landscapes, fantastic creatures, otherworldly characters, and the universe’s most diabolical mastermind–Ming the Merciless.

Flash Gordon: Classic Collection Volume 1 reprints all of Alex Raymond’s Sunday strips from January 1, 1934 to April 18, 1937, and includes additional background material and an introduction from Alex Ross.

The Nancy Show: Celebrating the Art of Ernie Bushmiller (Amazon) (Bud’s Art Books)

A companion catalogue of original art, memorabilia, and more from “The Nancy Show”, a 2024 exhibition honoring Ernie Bushmiller at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. This book includes reproductions from the museum show, including over 100 pieces of original artwork, with special bonus material.

… plus a biography by exhibition curator Brian Walker. A collector’s story by Tom Gammil gives insights on Nancy artwork and displays a gallery of dolls, toys, and other merchandise. The Nancy Show also features contributions by authors Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden (How To Read Nancy), as well as notes from Bill Griffith, Patrick McDonnell, Ivan Brunetti, and others.

Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry by Rafael Medoff and Craig Yoe

Cartoonists Against Racism uncovers the secret campaign to create anti-racist comics and cartoons to flood America’s newspapers, classrooms, and union halls. Meet the artists and the work that was their ammunition in the battle for America’s soul.

The book showcases impactful anti-racism artwork from the era’s preeminent cartoonists, including multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Bill Mauldin and Vaughn Shoemaker; New Yorker cartoonists Carl Rose, Mischa Richter, and Frank Hanley; famed antiwar cartoonist Robert Osborn; Dave Berg of Mad magazine; renowned sports cartoonist Willard Mullin; noted labor cartoonist Bernard Seaman; comics artist Mac Raboy (Flash Gordon, Captain Marvel Jr.); and Eric Godal, who escaped from Nazi Germany and became a leading cartoonist in the American press and acclaimed artist Dick Dorgan.

Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland by Ewa Sta?czyk

Antisemitic caricatures had existed in Polish society since at least the mid-nineteenth century. But never had the devastating impacts of this imagery been fully realized or so blatantly apparent than on the eve of the Second World War. In Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland, scholar Ewa Sta?czyk explores how illustrators conceived of Jewish people in satirical drawing and reflected on the burning political questions of the day. Incorporating hundreds of cartoons, satirical texts, and newspaper articles from the 1930s, Sta?czyk investigates how a visual culture that was essentially hostile to Jews penetrated deep and wide into Polish print media.

From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics by Neale Barnholden

Between the 1930s and the invention of the internet, American comics reached readers in a few distinct physical forms: the familiar monthly stapled pamphlet, the newspaper comics section, bubblegum wrappers, and bound books. From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics places the history of four representative comics—Watchmen, Uncle Scrooge, Richie Rich, and Fleer Funnies—in the larger contexts of book history, children’s culture, and consumerism to understand the roles that comics have played as very specific kinds of books. While comics have received increasing amounts of scholarly attention over the past several decades, their material form is a neglected aspect of how creators, corporations, and readers have constructed meaning inside and around narratives.

Here’s to You, Charlie Brown by Charles M. Schulz

This Facsimile edition of the original Here’s to you, Charlie Brown was first published in 1960 and features 126 pages classic Peanuts newspaper strips.

Louder Than Words, Actions Speak by Sergio Aragonés

The master of pantomime-on-paper and one of the most beloved cartoonists in the world presents the Louder Than Words, Actions Speak collection—a journey into the best gag strips of the previous and current century! Over 300 pages of comics from a true master of sequential humor! In the playful, energetic style that made Sergio famous and MAD Magazine funny, this collection is a must-have for anyone who has ever even chuckled! Sergio Aragonés proves time and time again that a picture may paint a thousand words, but one well-delivered gag is good for a million laughs!

Collects Louder Than Words comics 1 to 6 and Actions Speak comics 1 to 6.

Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte and Rex Hesner (review) (review)

Funny Stuff is a tribute to a unique art form: the single-panel gag cartoon. It looks at why so many of us enjoy cartoons, and what makes for a great cartoon. Authors Phil Witte and Rex Hesner consider how cartoonists can present a complex or odd scenario that we immediately grasp, and what enables us to “get” the humor in a flash. Based on interviews with cartoonist legends—Roz Chast, Sam Gross, Harry Bliss, Joe Dator, Mick Stevens, and many others—Funny Stuff will show how cartoons reveal much about the psyches of their creators.

The text is abundant with cartoons illustrating the observations of Witte and Hesner.

Jack Davis Exhibition Catalog

The Society of Illustrators marks the centenary celebration of Jack Davis’ birth by hosting a retrospective featuring the original art from among his most admired works, many for the first time ever. The art on view represents every genre and every phase of Davis’ six-decade career: from EC Comics and Mad Magazine to TV Guide and Time Magazine, from Raid and McDonald’s ads to NASCAR and Super Bowl promotions, from history book illustrations to movie posters.

Official Exhibition Catalog (with 3 exclusive poster prints inside!)

Schtick Figures: The Cool, the Comical, the Crazy by Drew Friedman

A new collection of portraits of cultural legends from the only cartoonist to have graced the covers of both New Yorker and Mad magazine, and seemingly everything in between.

In addition to over 100 full-page images, this collection features a foreword by historian of comedy Kliph Nesteroff, a glossary of brief biographical information on each subject by the author. Shtick Figures is a must have for fans of Friedman’s inimitable talent and sharp curatorial eye for preserving lesser known but worthy tributaries of all aspects of American culture, high and low.

Tig and Lily: Up Late! by Dan Thompson

Tig is having bad dreams and he doesn’t like it! Lily isn’t sure how to help but their friends, Monkey and Elephant have an idea! They say the best way to not have bad dreams is TO HAVE NO DREAMS AT ALL BY NOT GOING TO BED!

Join Tig, a house cat with tiger-sized dreams, and his best buddy and actual tiger Lily on a whimsical adventure to beat the bedtime scaries! This graphic novel is purr-fect for beginner readers transitioning to chapter books.

Chuck’s Art-Toons by C. G. Simonds

Through the centuries, professional artists of the highest caliber have temporarily entertained themselves by diverting focus from their major oeuvre, to entertain their inner-passions of one kind or another. C. G. Simonds is no exception. This slim volume, CHUCK’S ART-TOONS, reveals both his stinging wit and his skills as a master draughtsman. He has the ability to create powerful visual puns, raw and off the wall, reshaping our preconceived notions of such subjects as “Polly Ticks” (mouth the words), serious occupations; “Arc O’ Texts,” or just fun topics like, say, “Left Behind” (use your imagination…).

Printing Terror by Michael Goodrum and Philip Smith

Printing terror takes a fascinating look at American horror comics in the Cold War era, from the 1940s to the 1970s. It reveals how these comics both reflected and fed into the anxieties of the age, particularly in matters of race and gender.

The book traces the history of prominent titles such as Tales from the Crypt, Tomb of Terror and Chamber of Chills, while exploring the careers of cult figures within and around horror comics. Considering the context of Vietnam, the rise of feminism and the growth of the civil rights movement, it argues against the received wisdom that horror comics offered a subversive commentary on society. In reality they often repeated the sexist, racist and nationalistic tropes they purported to undermine.

EC Fan-Addict Fanzine No. 6 edited by Roger Hill and Grant Geissman

his 136 page, full-color issue is loaded with vintage E.C. lore and rare artwork. With articles on the recently discovered 1954 cover to Buster Crabbe No. 5, Jack Davis’s Lucky Star comic, an unpublished interview with Dr. Fredric Wertham, more Jack Davis and Coca-Cola, a conversation with Graham Ingels, a feature on Marie Severin’s illustrations done for the Financial Follies, a portfolio of Marie Severin’s signed and numbered E.C. cover colorings issued by Russ Cochran, the final installment on the creation of the legendary E.C. fanzine Squa Tront, and much more.

Corpse Crusaders: The Zombie in American Comics by Chera Kee

In the popular imagination, zombies are scary, decomposing corpses hunting down the living. But since the 1930s, there have also been other zombies shambling across the panels of comic books—zombies that aren’t quite what most people think zombies should be. There have been zombie slaves, zombie henchmen, talking zombies, beautiful zombies, and even zombie heroes.

Using archival research into Golden Age comics and extended analyses of comics from the 1940s to today, Corpse Crusaders explores the profound influence early action/adventure and superheroic generic conventions had on shaping comic book zombies. It takes the reader from the 1940s superhero, the Purple Zombie, through 1950s revenge-from-the-grave zombies, to the 1970s anti-hero, Simon Garth (“The Zombie”) and the gruesome heroes-turned-zombies of Marvel Zombies.

Kommix by Charles Burns

From the beguiling imagination of Charles Burns: 80 comic books that never were. Master cartoonist Charles Burns has never hidden his passion for comic books and pop culture from the 1950 and 1960s. Inspired by the romance, horror, and sci-fi comics of his youth, as well as the 1960s American underground, the author of Black Hole has created a collection of 80 original comic book covers that, through his own inimitable aesthetic, present an alternate universe of stories that never were, but that you will wish existed.

This is Burns at his most playful, imaginative, and suggestive, using the format of the comic book to continue to explore many of the themes that run through all his longer-form work ? adolescence, metamorphosis, nightmares, and sexuality ? and provide a pretext for the creation of some of the most mysterious and bewitching imagery of Burns’s incredible career. Kommix is like discovering an entire box of comic books you never knew existed.

Moomin Adventures: Book One by Tove Jansson and Lars Jansson

The classic comic strip by Tove Jansson and Lars Jansson in a new paperback series.

Presented in an all new softcover format that collects the all ages comics of both Tove Jansson and Lars Jansson, the five-volume Moomin Adventures series will introduce the timeless comic strip to a new generation of readers of all ages.

… a charming mix of strips from Finland’s most famous writer/artist Tove Jansson, and her brother Lars Jansson who taught himself how to draw in order to take over the strip when it was in syndication.

Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of COVID Lockdown Edited by Gabe Fowler

More than 140 single-page comics from artists the world over, documenting humanity’s retreat into COVID-19 lockdown and imagining our eventual, boisterous reemergence, gathered by the founder of the annual Comic Arts Brooklyn festival and owner of the beloved indie comics shop Desert Island.

Bracing, beautiful, and conspicuously optimistic, Rescue Party is part graphic diary, part time capsule, and part field guide: a grassroots project that tells the collective story of lockdown from a chorus of global voices and charts a course toward a more just future.

Suffrage Song: The Haunted History of Gender, Race and Voting Rights in the U.S. by Caitlin Cass

New Yorker contributing cartoonist Caitlin Cass traces the fight for suffrage in the U.S. from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This intersectional history of women and voting rights chronicles the suffrage movement’s triumphs, setbacks, and problematic aspects.

The interiors include 4 foldouts, most notably a 4-page map detailing where women could vote in the US in 1919, leading up to the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Impeccably researched and rendered in an engaging and accessible comics style, Suffrage Song is sure to spark discussion on the vital issue of voting rights that continues to resonate today.

Full-color illustrations throughout

It’s the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug!: Tom the Dancing Bug vol. 8 by Ruben Bolling

Clover Press’s Complete Tom the Dancing Bug program bursts forward with the eighth chronological volume, covering all of the most recent installments of the comic strip, a two-time Pulitzer Prize Finalist, from 2020-2023. 

It’s the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug! includes Bolling’s award-winning work covering the last year of the Trump presidency and the post-term MAGA insanity.  All the favorite Tom the Dancing Bug characters try to make sense of the dark times of the early 2020s.

THORN: The Complete Proto- BONE College Strips from 1982 to 1986, and Other Early Drawings by Jeff Smith

The Secret Origin of Jeff Smith’s BONE Comes to Light! NYT Bestselling Author Smith Returns to his Roots with a New Collection of His THORN College Strips!

The comic strips reveal an early version of BONE called THORN that was written for a college audience in the 1980s. THORN appeared  in the pages of The Ohio State University’s student newspaper The Lantern.

This beautiful edition includes plenty of bonus material such as recently discovered early drawings of the BONE characters, essays and interviews.

Alley Oop Meets Fang by Dave Graue

Alley Oop finds a new pal — a baby T.Rex named Fang, who joins with Alley who’s rescuing his friends from the dungeons of Lem. Also featuring the conclusion of Redbeard’s Island, with Alley as a pirate captain… and the first-ever Moovian County Fair!

Daily strips, 1989

And some public domain comic reproductions from Blurb/Comic Book Restore:

Mutt and Jeff, Book 14: The Kings of Comedy, 1929 by Bud Fisher

Discover adventures of Mutt and Jeff from 1929 edition and restoration 2023. Drawn by the famous cartoonist Bud Fisher! MUTT AND JEFF, THE KINGS OF COMEDY – Book #14 – Adventures in Black and White – Format: 8′ x 10 ‘ – 48 pages

Charlie Chaplin in the Army, 1917 by E. C. Segar?

Originally written and illustrated by Stuart Wallace Carothers until he died, on October 4, 1915. Elzie Crisler Segar seems a to have worked on the comic until its end. The comics were originally published by “Chicago Herald” a newspaper ” and sold to various other newspapers through the “J. Keeley-Handy Syndicate”.

Cartoons Davenport: 1898 by Homer Davenport

Discover the Cartoon’s Davenport, edited and new Layout by Comic Books Restore! From original 1898. – Black and white edition – 58 pages – Format: 8’x 10′ The drawings come from William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and cover the period leading up to the 1896 elections.

Percy and Ferdie 1921 by H. A. MacGill

Percy and Ferdie, famous heroes of comic strip after the first war. Drawn by the famous cartoonist: Harold Arthur MacGill. Here, new cover from original of Cupples and Leon, in 1921 – Format 8″x10′ – Black and white – 48 pages.

Billy Make Believe: Adventures from 1934 – 1935 by Harry Homan

Discover adventures of Billy make believe from journal press of 1934 – 1935 years. – Format 8′ x 10′

Mutt and Jeff Book Book 6: From comics golden age – 1919 by Bud Fisher

Discover adventures of Mutt and Jeff from 1919 edition and restoration 2022. – Book 6 – Adventures in Black and White – Format: 8.5 ‘ x 8.5 ‘ – 48 pages

Late add:

The Usual Growth Spurt by Bill Holbrook

Important changes took place in 2021, much to Coney’s distress as she was discovered to be the only one in her cohort not to have experienced a growth spurt during the 2020 lockdown. This took place at summer camp, where she and her friends pooled their talents to repel a predatory threat.
More drama was in store for Coney when she and Lin found that height wasn’t the only difference between them. On a brighter note, their crew enjoyed creating a Gardening Fantasy League…

^{feature image from Rose is Rose by Don Wimmer}