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Barrier, Michael. Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2014. 
Added by: joachim (12/11/14, 11:41 PM)   Last edited by: joachim (5/7/18, 10:39 AM)
Resource type: Book
Language: en: English
ID no. (ISBN etc.): 9780520241183
BibTeX citation key: Barrier2014
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Categories: General
Keywords: "Little Lulu", "Pogo", Barks. Carl, Children’s and young adults’ comics, Dell, Disney comics, Historical account, Kelly. Walt, Publishing, Stanley. John, USA
Creators: Barrier
Publisher: Univ. of California Press (Berkeley)
Views: 34/1199
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Abstract
Funnybooks is the story of the most popular American comic books of the 1940s and 1950s, those published under the Dell label. For a time, “Dell Comics Are Good Comics” was more than a slogan—it was a simple statement of fact. Many of the stories written and drawn by people like Carl Barks (Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge), John Stanley (Little Lulu), and Walt Kelly (Pogo) repay reading and rereading by educated adults even today, decades after they were published as disposable entertainment for children. Such triumphs were improbable, to say the least, because midcentury comics were so widely dismissed as trash by angry parents, indignant librarians, and even many of the people who published them. It was all but miraculous that a few great cartoonists were able to look past that nearly universal scorn and grasp the artistic potential of their medium. With clarity and enthusiasm, Barrier explains what made the best stories in the Dell comic books so special. He deftly turns a complex and detailed history into an expressive narrative sure to appeal to an audience beyond scholars and historians.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: “The Very Good Ones”

1. Mickey in a Magazine
2. Oskar Lebeck Meets Walt Kelly
3. Whitman, K.K., and Dell
4. Learning on the Job in L.A.
5. A Feel for Walt Kelly’s Stuff
6. Animal Magnetism
7. Cartoon Conundrums
8. Carl Barks Makes His Break
9. Barks Becomes the Duck Man
10. The Workman: Gaylord DuBois
11. The Observer: John Stanley
12. “I Am a Backwoods Bumpkin”
13. “Pure Corn” at Disney’s
14. Special Talents
15. Barks Masters His Medium
16. An Arena for All the Passions
17. Animal Kingdoms
18. Walt Kelly Branches Out
19. Strong-Handed Friends
20. Carl Barks: The Virtuoso
21. Walt Kelly Escapes
22. Oskar Lebeck in Exile
23. Manifest Destiny
24. Uncle Scrooge: Play Money
25. Carl Barks in Purgatory
26. The Slow Fade
27. Disasters

Epilogue: Can These Bones Live?
Abbreviations
Notes
Index


  
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