27 Years of Shoe

Book excerpt: Shoe is cartooning at its best. The strip captures issues and ideas that speak to a wide and diverse audience. It conveys volumes through its humor and simple lines. The First 27 Years of Shoe: World Ends at Ten, Details at Eleven exhibits that clarity and cartooning essence in frame after frame, strip after strip. The first Shoe collection of Jeff MacNelly and company's works since 1994, this book is a delight from Dave Barry's foreword to Mike Peters's "backward."Edited by Chris Cassatt and Susie MacNelly, who along with Gary Brookins keep Shoe as lively, vital, and vibrant as Jeff did until his death in June 2000, The First 27 Years of Shoe contains hundreds of cartoons from 1977 to the present. Plenty of MacNelly extras pepper the book, including actual (and critical, of course) notes from Jeff's teachers, as well as photos and warm remembrances of the creative genius who won three Pulitzer Prizes for his editorial cartooning and two Reubens, cartooning's highest award, for Shoe.Best of all, though, The First 27 Years of Shoe includes just that: year after year of Shoe, Perfesser Cosmo Fishhawk, Skyler, and Roz-along with Senator Batson D. Belfry, Irving Seagull, Wiz, Loon, and more-squawking, diving, and flying hard through life's ups and downs. Through the decades Shoe has proven both successful and memorable, a tribute sure to be shared by this MacNelly collection.