NEWLYWEDS AND THEIR BABY'S COMIC PICTURES FOR PAINTING AND CRAYONING

McManus, George. THE NEWLYWEDS AND THEIR BABY'S COMIC PICTURES FOR PAINTING AND CRAYONING. Akron, Ohio & New York: Saalfield Publishing Co., 1917. Oblong quarto. First edition. Original color pictorial wrappers. Neatly rebacked, mild rubbing, some coloring in a few places, but a very good copy, and a miracle of survival. OCLC locates only a single copy of this work. McManus (1884-1954) began his career with the `New York World' in 1905, where `Newlyweds and Their Baby' first appeared, and he is best remembered for his comic strip, BRINGING UP FATHER, the first American comic strip to achieve international fame. That strip was issued in book form in a series starting in 1917, and went through nearly two dozen numbers by the early 1930s --all of which are seen regularly in the market. His other successful strips were LET GEORGE DO IT, PANHANDLE PETE, and, of course the present work, which is comprised of comic strips (6 and 8 panel formats) first published in newspapers between 1907 and 1916. Some of the strips are printed in color (Sunday strips), while others (dailies were typically in black and white) are intended for coloring, but no crayola has ever besmirched this volume. The first newspaper comic strips appeared in the 1890s, and the first modern "comic book" was a selection of Mutt & Jeff strips published by the Chicago `American' in 1911 (THE ADVENTURES OF OBIDIAH OLDBUCK, published in the 1840s is sometimes described as the first American "comic book" but it was a translation from a French work published previously, and was not a comic book in the modern sense). The first cloth-bound book collection of comic strips was Fontaine Fox's FUNNY FOLK (New York: Doran, 1917; OCLC locates 9 copies, by way of comparison). The first "comic book" published independently of any newspaper with original previously unpublished material was THE FUNNIES, a 13 part tabloid format series published in 1929. And the first truly "modern" comic book sold at newsstands, FAMOUS FUNNIES, appeared in 1934. We have not been able to determine whether the present volume contains previously unpublished material (some strips have earlier copyrights from `The World' while others do not), nor can we establish a link between Saalfield Pub. Co. and any newspaper, so the precise status of this comic