Skippy Volume 4: Complete Dailies 1934-1936

Book excerpt: The spiritual ancestor to Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, and almost every other kid strip ever created continues through the Depression, under threatening European war. This fourth volume collects the complete daily strips from 1934-1936, at the height of Crosby's one-man political and social crusade. Crosby influenced cartoonists from Charles Schulz to Walt Kelly to Garry Trudeau, and, perhaps more than any other cartoonist before him, brought philosophy and politics to the American newspaper comic strip. In the end, it would be his outspoken political and philosophical beliefs that would place him increasingly outside the mainstream of 1940s American culture, ultimately leading to his exile from comics and his forced incarceration in a mental institution for the last sixteen years of his life. As a result of his tragic end, Crosby's remarkable contributions to American culture have been largely eclipsed, until now. Bonus materials include many photographs and rare artwork from the collection of the cartoonist's daughter, Joan Crosby Tibbetts.