As has been noted twice before on this blog (see here and here), a color Sunday version of Crockett Johnson‘s Barnaby ran from 1946 to 1948. Courtesy of Colin Myers, here’s a full-page one from the winter of 1948. Though it’s undated, “winter” would have to be January or February because the color Barnaby concluded in May of 1948. Most of the Sunday strips are half a page; this one is unusual in that it’s full-page.
The artist is Jack Morley, the words are by Ted Ferro. For the daily strips during this period, Johnson was serving in an advisory capacity; I assume he was also serving as a story consultant for the Sunday strips. While they’re not up to Johnson’s exacting standards, the Ferro-Morley strips are still fun.
Not incidentally, my blog has been unusually quiet during this past week because of two Crockett Johnson projects:
- The Complete Barnaby, Vol. 1. My afterword (complete!) and notes (nearly complete!) are due in to Fantagraphics on December 1st. The book is due out in June 2012. You can learn more about it in the Spring/Summer 2012 Fantagraphics catalogue.
- Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How An Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature. The copyedited text arrived on November 18th, right at the beginning of a Thanksgiving “break” during which I already had an impossibly long list of tasks to complete. It’s due back on December 9th. The book is due out in September 2012 from the University Press of Mississippi.