This piece appeared in Comic Art in 2004.  As the magazine is now (sadly) defunct, I’m posting the article here.  Until The Purple Crayon and a Hole to Dig: The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss appears in 2012, this essay is the most thorough account of Johnson’s life available.  Enjoy! Philip Nel, “Crockett Johnson and
To support President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1944 re-election campaign, Syd Hoff, Crockett Johnson, Lynd Ward, Hugo Gellert, William Gropper, and fourteen other artists illustrated this booklet. The text is FDR’s speech made before the Teamsters Union on September 23rd, 1944 – also known as the “Fala speech,” since it features his dog, Fala. Here is
A dog. A bug. A walk around the block. From this simple premise comes one of the great picture contemporary picture books – and, while we’re on the subject, great picture books, period. With a spare, clean design and plenty of humor, Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash’s Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug (2007) is a pleasure
As a follow-up to Saturday’s post (featuring Crockett Johnson’s Little Man with the Eyes strip), here are a few more of Johnson‘s Little Man comics, starting with one for April Fools Day, 1941. I was pleased to see Mark Newgarden share the original post on Facebook because — as I was writing the original post —
He’s famous for Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) and the comic strip Barnaby (1942-1952), but Crockett Johnson wrote an earlier strip – one that was popular enough to feature in a series of Ford advertisements in the late 1940s.  Popularly known as The Little Man with the Eyes, Johnson’s strip ran in Collier’s from March
When you wonder whether there’s a higher percentage of dunderheads in our political discourse (and, these days, who doesn’t?), a little perspective may be of help. In September 1942, Alfred A. Knopf published The Illustrious Dunderheads, edited by Rex Stout and illustrated by William Gropper. As Frank Sullivan writes in his introduction, “the book is
“Barnaby exclusively in the Chicago Sun!” Here’s a photo of a Chicago Sun delivery truck in the 1940s. The occasion for sharing the photo is the quest for original Barnaby strips! Â As readers of this blog know, Eric Reynolds and I are co-editing The Complete Barnaby for Fantagraphics. Â We’re currently working on gathering strips from
While he was contributing to the New Yorker as Syd Hoff, he was also contributing to the Daily Worker and New Masses as A. Redfield – the pseudonym he adopted for his radical work. The Ruling Clawss (Daily Worker, 1935) collects his cartoons originally published in the Communist daily. Contrary to what all published biographies
In a tribute to the Barnaby fan clubs of the 1940s, Del Rey created its own “Barnaby International Fan Club” – or, at least, the laminated plastic card announcing such a club – to promote the six Barnaby volumes it published in 1985 and 1986.  Here’s the front of the card: Here’s the  back: Del
1. Best novel that I missed when it came out: Guus Kuijer’s The Book of Everything (Scholastic, 2006). Narrated by a nine-year-old, this is an all-ages book about love, faith, and growing up. It has a sense of humor, too. I devoted a post to this book earlier in the month. 2. Album of the Year: