When I was researching the New York left wing PM newspaper, I came across a cartoon series called Crack-Ups, which featured the best of six cartoonists daily. When I had the title, I found it had been syndicated as well, to several other papers. The weekends (Saturdays in some papers, Sundays in PM) were filled by VIP and he seems to have drawn these cartoons especially for this series, so it was not one of those 'the best from the magazines' collections. The series went on throught the forties, with Partch's output only slightly falling back in 1946, when he was in the army (after the war). A quick count told me, that I had found a stash of Virgil Partch cartoon from what I consider his best (earliest) period that counted about 500 cartoons. I clipped as many as I could find and kept them back in case I would ever be able to do a book on VIP. When I found out Jon Barlo was already working on such a book (with the help of the Partch family as well) I offered him my findings. He looked up the cartoons for himself and used some of them in his book on VIP's career and presumably on the follow up cartoon books he and Fantagraphics did. Jon thanks me nicely in the book and brought me in touch with Rick Marshall, with whom he had done the book. I had corresponded with Rick when he was doing Nemo magazine in the nineties, so it was great to reconnect. So now I am left wit these odd clippings of Crack-Ups. I still hope to have a complete collection of good copies one day, but this is what I gathered online over the last few years (minus a few I have shown earlier). I think some of these ended up being reused in True in the fifties under the title VIP's war, possibly redrawn as well.
I am opening with a couple by the other regulars.
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