Yet another classic comic strip from yesteryear will be seeing the light of day once more as NBM announced the other day they intend to publish “Forever Nuts: Classic Screwball Strips — The Early Years of Mutt and Jeff.”
Those in the know, or with a copy of the Smithsonian Book of Comic Strips on hand, will recognize M&J as one of the first daily strips, and I believe the first to attempt a continuous story (though someone may feel free to correct me on that point). Early strips had Jeff pegged as a compulsive gambler, with him heading to the horse track, and betting on a nag that would actually be racing on that day. Surprisingly enough, many of these 100 year old strips hold up surprisingly well, as Jog well notes. Tom, meanwhile has his thoughts here.
NBM is no stranger to reprinting classic strips, as they handled the Tarzan books awhile back. Still, it will be interesting to see how they handle material this ancient. The book comes out in May. Full press release after the jump.
CLASSIC, HISTORIC, AND UTTERLY NUTS!
Deluxe Book Celebrating Mutt & Jeff’s 100th Anniversary
Highlights NBM’s 30th Anniversary
The year 2007 is the hundredth anniversary of Mutt & Jeff, one of the
longest-lasting and most popular comic strips. It’s also the 30th
anniversary of NBM Publishing and a perfect time to reprint the strip
as the first of a planned new series of deluxe-format reprints, FOREVER
NUTS: Classic Screwball Strips — The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff reveals
that the pioneering strip was odder, crazier, and funnier than most
modern readers would expect.
FOREVER NUTS is a new series of reprints concentrating on very early,
very goofy strips — early classics that have aged surprisingly well,
with off-the-wall humor that remains fresh to this day. Each volume
will present a different strip from the early 20th century.
Mutt & Jeff began as A. Mutt (the A stood for Augustus), a cartoon
about a harried husband who escaped his wife by gambling at the
racetrack. The brainchild of cartoonist Bud Fisher first appeared in
the San Francisco Chronicle’s sports page on November 15, 1907. The
strip’s popularity skyrocketed after March 27, 1908, when Mutt met
Jeff. A pint-sized insane asylum inmate, Jeff insisted that he was
boxing champion James Jeffries. The combination of Mutt (who was
always trying to get rich and always failing) with Jeff (gullible and
willing to try anything) became a sensation.
Mutt & Jeff was (and is):
• The first truly popular and successful daily newspaper strip.
• The first strip to establish the Monday-through-Saturday schedule
that daily strips follow today.
• The first ongoing strip to produce political sequences (when Jeff
ran for President in 1908).
• The first comic strip adapted into a successful series of animated
cartoons.
• The first strip to make its creator rich and famous.
• One of the first strips to become part of the English language (for
decades, people nicknamed any pairing of a tall man and a short man
“Mutt and Jeff”).
• One of the first strips to launch a flood of merchandising.
• One of the first strips to appear in comic books (it appeared on the
cover of Famous Funnies #1 in 1933) and one of the longest-lasting (the
characters appeared regularly in comic books from 1939 to 1965).
• One of the longest running strips of all time (currently distributed
by Universal Press Syndicate).
Comic-strip expert Jeffrey Lindenblatt is the editor of the FOREVER
NUTS books. For more than 15 years, Mr. Lindenblatt has been reprinting
classic comic strips in his magazines The Missing Years (featuring
comics that have not been reprinted in decades) and Strip Adventure.
Mr. Lindenblatt has appeared on the comics radio series ‘Nuff Said!,
and he has led the Research Committee at the Museum of Comic and
Cartoon Art, a society devoted to the collection, preservation, study,
education, and display of comic and cartoon art.
Comics historian Allen Holtz of the website Stripper’s Guide provides
the book’s introduction. The designer of The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff
and other books in the FOREVER NUTS series is J.P. Trostle, a winner of
design and illustration awards from the Pennsylvania and North Carolina
Press Associations. NBM readers know his work from books such as
Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists.
NBM is no stranger to great comic-strip reprints. The company was the
first publisher to issue series of books reprinting complete runs of
comic-strip classics, starting with Milton Caniff’s Terry and the
Pirates in 1983. FOREVER NUTS: Classic Screwball Strips is a highlight
of NBM’s 30th anniversary celebration, which lasts from September 2006
through September 2007.
The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff, which NBM will ship to stores in May,
is an 8” by 6” jacketed hardcover with 192 pages of black-and-white
art. The cover price is $24.95; the ISBN is 978-1-56163-502-3. For
more information, contact David Seidman, NBM Publishing/ComicsLit
Online Publicist, at davidseidman@earthlink.net or 310-652-4369, or
Jeffrey Lindenblatt at jalcomic@aol.com or 516-382-2404.
