The Fabuleous Fifties

When Marshall Was King

Friday editorial.

I recently realized that everything I am doing here o this blog is in fact a hommage to the great eighties and nineties fanzine Nemo. For thirty issues, we got great commentary and terrific samples of never seen comic strips and oddities from a hundred years of comic history. Of course, my interests lie more in the fortie, fifties and sixties, but although a large part of Nemo was devoted to the earlier years of the comic strip, equal attention was paid to later years. Or at least more than in many of the available books about the subject. I don't know what it is, it might be my age, but I am just not as much interested in the cartoon strips of the first thirty years of the newspaper strip and even the great adventure strips didn't get interesting to me until well into the forties. But since many historians are more fascinated by beginnings than by the later years, I have often had to make do with glimpses of what I like - until the internet started making them available to me, by allowing me to buy Sunday comcis from e-bay and other sources and by all those collectiosn of micro-fiche scans that start popping up the last couple of years. But Nemo's net was cast wide enough to include gems I have been sharing here as well: Jack Cole's Betsy and Me, Jack Kent's King Aroo, Mort Walker's early years, Mel Graff's Patsy and there was even an article on Johnstone and Cushings comic strip advertising agency.

So it is with great pleasure that I take notice of the fact that Rick Marshall whose knowledge and collecion was the basis of Nemo, has signed on with Fantagraphics to start his own line of newspaper strip books. The news is outlined here: http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Fantagraphics-anno\
unces-publishing-agreement-with-comics-historian-Rick-Marschall.html&Itemid=113 and as you can see, already a couple of very interesting projects are mentioned. I hope they will find someone as talented as Dean Mulhany (who runs the Library of American Comics at IDW) to oversee the production. I for one am looking forward to these books, especially the planned book on advertising strips. I hope they will look at my blog to take some suggestions. And if they need any scans, they know how to find me. Mind you, my importance as a blogger would increase a lot if all of the 500 plus daily visitors (with an estimated reach of 2500 by now) would vote for my little poll on the desirabillity of a Johnny Reb reprint book (only four days to go)...