Monday, July 25, 2011

Nize Work If You Can Get It

Monday Some More Cartoons Day.

Having discovered Milt Gross through his silent graphic novel She Dome Him Wrong and his catoon book reviews for Ken (all of which I showed here and which were my most visited pages for a long time), I can't explain why more collections of Gross' newspaper work weren't put out by the generations of comic strip historians. Both Dave's Delicatessen and Count Screwloose deserve color collections. Tear sheets of those strips command high prices, so the collectors know. Also interesting is his earlier daily strip work. It shows his anything for a laugh cartoon style. Hitz and Miss is a short running strip I never even heard of and Banana Oil was one of the expressions Gross popularized in his work. Gross Exaggerations has the honor of being the only strip I know, that was an illustrated column on Sundays and a strip daily. My samples come from Google Newspaper Archive and are a bit muddy, but in the absence of a btter and more complete reprint...



























2 comments:

Paul C.Tumey said...

Ger, your blog never ceases to amaze me. I just now discovered this post - a treasure trove of rare Milt Gross comics. Thank you so much for unearthing these and sharing. I will post links on my Screwball Comics blog directing folks to this and your other Gross posts. - Paul Tumey

Marc Deckter said...

Terrific post - thanks so much for sharing these. I had never heard of "Hitz and Mrs." before - love the hat gags.