[(Sundays with Walt and Skeezix)] [Author: Frank O King] published on

by Frank King

Sunday Press Books presents a masterpiece in comic art by Frank King. Collected for the first time, here are the best Gasoline Alley Sunday comics, starting from the very first Sunday in 1921. King's innovations in art, layout and storytelling brought a new warmth and style to the medium at the dawn of the Golden Age of newspaper comic strips. This book is designed by Chris Ware with an introduction by Jeet Heer. As with the Sunday Press editions of Little Nemo in Slumberland, these incredible Sunday pages are shown digitally restored to their original colorful brilliance and reproduced at full size (16 by 21 inches). The book is filled with images of comics memorabilia and photographs of King's life. It also includes texts on King's life and work by journalist Tim Samuels and comics historian/critic Donald Phelps.

Included in the book is a full-sheet cardboard insert replica of a 1920's Skeezix cut-out toy.

Genres: Comics, Comic Strips, History, Graphic Novels, Humor, Collections

Hardcover

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

One of the pioneering giants of American comic strips, Frank King was born in Cashton, Wisconsin in 1883. He joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune in 1909, a newspaper which was known for aggressively developing comics to build circulation. Almost from the start of his career, King's cartoons were frequently featured on the front page of the Tribune. After creating a string of minor hits, he made his lasting mark in 1919 by creating Gasoline Alley, which became one of the most widely syndicated and read strips in North America until King's death in 1969. He spent most of his life in Chicago and Florida.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phyllis shows up only two or three times.

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible collection of Frank King's landmark comic strip, Gasoline Alley, a deceptively quaint slice-of-life comic that first started in 1918. Initially a secondary feature to The Rectangle, Gasoline Alley was originally the corner segment of the Chicago Tribune's Sunday page where characters like Walt, Doc, Avery, and Bill held weekly conversations about automobiles. Slowly growing recognition, Gasoline Alley would grow into King's magnum opus work. First becoming a typical strip featuring gags and adventures, the strip would rapidly evolve into a series of gentle slices of Americana, where main character Walt Wallet and his adoptive child Skeezix (though Skeezix does refer to Walt as "Uncle Walt") would have some charming adventures together. Skeezix was found on his doorstep, which furthered Walt's standing as the affable bachelor who possesses a heart of gold.

Skeezix contributes to one of the more notable attributes of the strip. Where most strips result in one off stories that reset, Gasoline Alley began to age up Skeezix in almost real time. Various phases of his life get explored, and torches get passed on to newer characters over time. Though the strip still goes on in form today, Frank King's stretch on this strip is simply defining comics work.

This edition presents the very best of Frank King's Sunday strips, complete with broadsheet sized pages that fully deliver his panoramic layouts and whimsical cartooning to its full majestic glory. Designed impeccably by Chris Ware, Sundays with Walt and Skeezix is well worth it for those who want another way to appreciate King's Gasoline Alley.

[Victoria & David Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oversized edition which is more than a lapful, but which gives a wonderful sense of the original quiet life and philosophy of a boy and his uncle in the 20's and 30's. Showing an obvious debt to Windsor McKay and his Little Nemo in slumberland, the whimsical draftmanship is almost on a par with that of Gus Arriola in his Gordo Sunday submissions. (still the best)

[Andrés Santiago · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magistral

[Michael Wick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gasoline Alley was a strip penned by Frank King, starting in the 1920's and featured in the Chicago Tribune. It was a strip that featured Walt and his adopted son, Skeezix, and the rest of the Gasoline Alley gang through the years of their lives (and, as it continues to the present day, through successive generations of the Wallet family--although it is a far inferior strip nowadays). This collection reproduces the Sunday strips, which were full-page and in brilliant color. The book is oversized, about the size of a newspaper from the time the strips were produced--so it was a bit of a hassle when I took it on the T with me so I could show a co-worker who had got me into the strip, but was well worth it to see his reaction.

[Aresio Mavraganis · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can tell this was written in the 1920's but it's still funny.

[Keith Bowden]

I would dearly love to read this book, but the format - over-size full-color hardcover - makes it unlikely that I'll be able to buy it any time soon. Alas.