SCREWBALL! The Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny

"Screwball! The Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny" by Paul C. Tumey is the greatest book ever published. All other books are just… pamphlets, mimeographs, ephemera. In a word: TRASH!Possibly the only thing that can save America today is this Great Book.The huge size, layout and production of this book are staggeringly good. I think they used both graphics AND design when putting this together. Dean Mullaney and Lorraine Turner have done a magnificent job, truly.The color reproductions alone are worth TWICE, no THREE TIMES the asking price. And I understand there’s words in there too, for you literary types. Actually, there’s a ton of research and information here, incredible rare photos and strips that have NEVER BEFORE been re-printed!The list of forgotten and neglected comic strip masters would warm any true fan’s heart: Frederick Burr Opper (who knew it was pronounced aw-per), Eugene Zimmerman, Walter R. Bradford, Clare Victor Dwiggins, Gus Mager, the INCOMPARABLE George Herriman, Rube Goldberg, Walter Hoban, E.C. Segar (the man was far more than just the creator of Popeye), the AMAZING Milt Gross, Gene Ahern, George Swanson, the FABULOUS Bill Holman, Ving Fuller (director Sam Fuller's brother) and the frankly BIZARRE George Rogers.If you don’t know Milt Gross, you don’t know funny. Seriously. All the Mysteries of Life are revealed in Bill Holman’s Smokey Stover, if you know where to look. My CPA says my entire financial life is a Rube Goldberg contraption.Our country is suffering and this book is THE answer. Empty your bank accounts, cancel your brokerage deals, sell all your stocks, bonds and mutual funds and buy as many copies of this book as you possibly can. You’ll thank me later.Buy it, read it, LAUGH YOUR A** OFF! Reality will still be there when you’re done.Mr. Tumey, THANK YOU for all your tremendously hard work. I promise, if I ever stop laughing, I will read every word you wrote. You’ve performed an incredible rescue mission that ensures these cartoon classics will live again for today’s audience, where they are SO DESPERATELY needed.Foo, indeed!("Street Rod" by Henry Gregor Felsen is the second greatest book ever published, if you were wondering).

Really enjoyed this book. A really heartfelt, produced book. Nice design and scans, and very well bound and produced. Pages and pages of cornball illustrations. It's a total delight.

Paul Tumey’s book Screwball!, which was nominated for the 2020 Eisner Award for Best Book about Comics, is a beautiful volume that includes cartoons on almost every page. The book’s unusual size of 11 by 11 inches allows for the reproduction of mostly color cartoons in their original gorgeous hues. This volume is a must for anyone who wants to learn about this unique category of the visual arts.Tumey discusses a different cartoonist in each of the book’s 15 chapters. I know nothing about cartoonists of the first part of the last century and appreciate that Tumey provides biographic backgrounds in addition to describing each artist’s themes and illustrative characteristics. The focus of the book is on cartoons that picture explosive actions like the “screwball spin” and include both visual and written puns.Many of the cartoons are extraordinarily detailed, like Walter Bradford’s 1901 “Christmas in Animal Land,” which is in full color and pictures more than 80 insects, birds, and animals. Tumey describes Clare “Dwig” Dwiggins’ 1909 cartoon “School Days and Ophelia” (1909) as “typically dense and cockamamie.”There’s a chapter on the infamous Rube Goldberg, whom Tumey describes as “the Napoleon of the nuthouse.” Goldberg’s name is familiar even to people who’ve never read his cartoons, as a machine was named after him—one that, per Wikipedia, is “intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and overly complicated way.” This was inspired by Goldberg’s cartoons like “How to Strain Soup Through a Full-Grown Beard” (1916). I particularly like his Foolish Questions series; for example: “Are you drawing a picture?” “No, Miss Margaret, I’m out riding in my motor boat.”Besides the treasure of cartoons this book includes, Tumey’s writing is excellent. It’s obvious he did a huge amount of research about every cartoonist and their life and work, and his prose wonderfully describes the singular, manic art of what he calls screwball comics. “If the act of creating absurdist art is whistling in the dark, then with Smokey Stover, Bill Holman, a valedictorian of the school of hard knocks, was belting out arias. With its gushing fire-hose froth of gags, visual puns, background jokes, surreal imagery, explosions, and slapstick chaos Smokey Stover offered more humor per square inch than anything else in the newspaper.”

I cannot add much to what previous reviewers have already said. This book was a genuine pleasure to read. It has motivated me to explore more of the work of the artists covered in this thoroughly researched book. Publishers, if you're listening, please bring us a collection of Gene Ahern's The Squirrel Cage!

However, you'll need a magnifying glass to read the strips, which had to be shrunk down to fit on the page.

This (huge) book has a terrific and huge collection! It was obviously a "labor of love" to put together this compilation. Also, the colors are great.

This book is SO beautiful and well-researched! I'm completely pleased with it and could not recommend it more! It's also a delightful (often funny) look back at the attitudes of past times. An absolutely worthy purchase and a must-have for any comics scholar.

A lot of memories of early newspaper comics

Love this book!