Gross Exaggerations: The Meshuga Comic Strips of Milt Gross

by Milt Gross, Ivan Brunetti (Foreword), Mark Newgarden (Introduction)

Presenting a comprehensive collection of the major comic strips from Milt   Nize Baby , Count Screwloose , and  Dave's Delicatessen , along with other comic strips and offerings from books and magazines. The king of "screwball" comic strips, Milt Gross had a varied career in movies and animation, humorous poetry and illustrated novels, and, most prolifically, comic strips. Beginning in the 1920s, his comics were born of the Yiddish humor in vaudeville and expanded to lampooning all the foibles and fallacies of American life. Filled with bizarre characters and frenzied, slapstick action, Gross's newspaper comics entertained readers for decades. Most of the classics seen here have never been reprinted before! Full color illustrations throughout

Genres: Comics, Humor, Graphic Novels

144 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2020

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

As part of the ongoing efforts to archive and represent some of the leading names in comics history, we have here the work of Milt Gross (1895-1953), focusing on collected strips Nize Baby, Count Screwloose, and Dave's Delicatessen. Gross created comics in the Yiddish humor tradition, making fun of Jewish accents and behavior, with slapstick and other silliness, anticipating Mad Magazine, among other things. Gross said he had ten rules for making comics: "The first is be funny all the time, and the other nine don't matter." He originated the non-sequitur "Banana Oil!"

Some titles: De Night in de Front from Chreesmas, Dunt Esk

His masterpiece (which I had heard of but have not read yet) is He Done Her Wrong: The Great American Novel and Not a Word in It — No Music, Too. A wordless tale over 300 pages.

Here's a sample of his screwball comics.

https://screwballcomics.blogspot.com/...

[Bill Coffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really solid survey and retrospective of one of the most notable cartoonists of the early newspaper days. For fans of Milt Gross, this will be a pile of gold. For those who have never read Gross before, it might not be as much if they don't appreciate his sense of humor. Alas, Gross doesn't really hit my funny bone the way other cartoonists of that age do, but that's the shortcoming of this reader, not this book. Anyone who has an interest in bygone cartoonists should check this out, and any Milt Gross fans should definitely include this in their collection.