Complete Little Orphan Annie Volume 16

by Harold Gray

A chronological reprinting of one of the most important comic strips of the 20th a cultural icon--in both her red-headed, blank-eyed appearance, and as the embodiment of American individuality, spunk, and self-reliance.

Annie might feel as if she's between hammer and anvil, but those are about the only menaces she avoids during the early 1950s! In less than two years of stories, the little orphan gets run over by a car, shot with a pistol, whacked with a bludgeon, firebombed in her bed, shoved in a gunny sack, caught in a tornado, flung overboard in a raging storm, and thrown alive into an underground cemetery vault. Meanwhile, "Daddy" Warbucks, Punjab, and the Asp are a thousand miles away, with no clue to the whereabouts of America's spunkiest kid.

"Here Today, Gone Tomorrow" reprints all daily and color Sunday strips from October 29, 1951 through July 5, 1953. Included are five stories replete with greed and murder, atomic boats, blackmailers, poisoners, and deadly mutineers--yet also filled with good Samaritans and friendship from the most unexpected quarter, while also posing the can romance survive in a town called Futility?

280 pages, Hardcover

First published November 12, 2019

About the author

Harold Lincoln Gray was an American newspaper artist and cartoonist.

Gray grew up on a farm near the small town of Chebanse, Illinois. He graduated from Purdue University with a degree in engineering, but as an artist, he was largely self-taught. A former letterer for Sidney Smith on The Gumps, he came up with a strip idea in 1924 for Little Orphan Otto. The title was quickly altered by Chicago Tribune editor Joseph Medill Patterson to Little Orphan Annie.
By the 1930s this strip had evolved from a crudely-drawn melodrama to a crisply rendered atmospheric story with novelistic plot threads. The dialogue consisted mainly of meditations on Gray's own deeply conservative political philosophy.
Gray sometimes ghosted Little Joe (1933-72), the strip by his assistant (and cousin) Ed Leffingwell which was continued by Ed's brother Robert. Maw Green, a spin-off of Annie was published as a topper to Little Orphan Annie. It mixed vaudeville timing with the same deeply conservative attitudes as Annie.
Harold Gray was a charter member of Lombard Masonic Lodge #1098, A.F. & A.M. in 1923.

Reviews

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gray's trademark mix of homespun philosophy, violent action, whimsy, and political incoherence is on full entertaining display here, across the continuities included. The first couple--little amnesiac Annie (not for the first time!) encounters Simple Samson and Mother M'kee, then blind newspaper-hawker Kris Kringle and his collection of waifs--seem to truncate rather than conclude, as if Gray changed his mind about pursuing these to full conclusions. Instead, and rather implausibly, Lahtel and Redda from the previous continuity twice happen upon Annie by chance and try to kill her, despite her amnesia, and despite having been acquitted of the murders they committed, so given double jeopardy, they'd be free and clear even if her memory did return and she could bear witness against them. But then, Gray rarely shows much concern for the complexities or niceties of law. In one continuity, "eminent domain" is represented as it if means burning and bombing people out of their homes. In another, holding the chief of police at gunpoint has no consequences. Admittedly, he was the killer, but that was unknown at the time, and the person who drew down on him was a civilian, not a law officer. Indeed, Gray's substitution of a sort of frontier (or far east) justice for the processes of law may be a very convenient and even satisfying resolution to a plot, but it is nevertheless somewhat disturbing as a real-world philosophy. Gray also has some meta fun in this volume, having little amnesiac Annie adopt the name Annie because she looks just like the red-headed waif in the comics, Little Orphan Annie. Anyway, those already enamored of Gray's trademarks will find this volume enjoyable. Those new to him may be a bit at sea, but they should at least be able to appreciate the stark but often chillingly beautiful art.