The Ancient Southwest and Other Dispatches from a Cruel Frontier by Michael H. Price

by Michael H. Price

From dinosaurs to Conquistadores, The Ancient Southwest, a dynamically illustrated collection of natural history and early-day recorded history, takes its cue from the tradition of storytelling in pictures. The narrative medium is the comic strip, applied here "to increase popular interest in geology," as one of its original contributors described the project. An enormously popular feature in the West Texas newspaper where it originated more than fifty years ago, The Ancient Southwest has been painstakingly restored and annotated by the cartoonist and cultural historian Michael H. Price as a follow-through to a lengthy collaboration with the primary artist, the late George E. Turner. The strips, originally designed for serialized weekly publication, have gone unseen since 1951-1952. Inspired by the permanent collections of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas, the cartoons cover a vast span of prehistory, from the earliest invertebrate and reptilian life to the Age of Mammals and the Paleo-Indians. The volume also contains a full restoration of Turner's The Palo Duro Story, recounting one of the earliest Spanish explorations of North America from the viewpoint of Cabeza de Vaca. An appendix reproduces a selection of Turner's college-newspaper cartoons of the post-World War II years, foreshadowing the style he would bring to bear upon The Ancient Southwest and The Palo Duro Story.

Paperback

First published March 9, 2005

About the author

In 1987, writer-guitarist Josh Alan Friedman sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads (the Crossroads of the World--Broadway & 42nd Street) and moved to Texas. Hed just written Tales of Times Square, a cult classic. An Expanded Edition with new chapters was recently released, while the still-unfinished movie of Tales has played 35 film festivals.

Joshs latest book is Black Cracker, the story of his tumultuous childhood as the only white boy at Long Island's last segregated school. In 2008: Tell the Truth Until They Bleed: Coming Clean in the Dirty World of Blues and Rock 'n' Roll. Before that: When Sex Was Dirty; I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life (with Al Goldstein); Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern (co-editor).

Josh also set off satirical fires and lawsuits as writer-half of the Friedman Bros, the most feared cartooning duo of the late '70s and '80s. Two anthologies remain in print, featuring the art of Josh's brother, Drew Friedman: Warts and All and Any Similarity to Persons Living Or Dead Is Purely Coincidental.

On the music front, as Josh Alan, he barnstormed the state of Texas for 20 years, rocking whole arenas with his Guild D-40. Copping three Dallas Observer Music Awards for Best Acoustic Act, he released four albums: Famous & Poor, The Worst!, Blacks 'n' Jews (the title of which became a documentary on Joshs life) and Josh Alan Band."