This column reads a little bit different than most; call it an experiment, or call it a response to the crushing addition of writing the novel on top of everything else. This week, a straight-out look at some of the terrific new archival editions put out by Fantagraphics over the past couple of months.

2005 brought a new archival project to the house that Groth and Thompson built: THE COMPLETE DENNIS THE MENACE by Hank Ketcham. As you can imagine, such a project is stunning in its ambition, as the single panel strip got its start back in 1951. Volume one presents, in gorgeous hardcover, every strip from 1951 and 52, and I was surprised at just how impressive a collection it is. My personal memories of Dennis start pretty young, not only from watching reruns of the classic TV show, but from reading the 70s era strip and seeing the character plastered on every surface of my local Dairy Queen. And to be honest, the strip had moved well past its prime at that point, and was toothless to the point of harmless.

Not so these early strips. Ketcham’s early strips have a surprisingly darker edge to them; while he claims Dennis isn’t a malicious creature, some of these panels from the first couple of years defy that statement. Artistically, Ketcham has a much purer style in his panels, and I think that’s because much of this material was done before he became a corporate entity and had to bring in assistants to help. I don’t know how further volumes of the series will fare, but this was really very excellent.

Not so, however, for Ketcham’s autobiography THE MERCHANT OF DENNIS THE MENACE. It’s only by technicality that Ketcham could have even referred to this as an autobiography; sure, it’s a very linear narrative of the events of his life, but there’s so little emotional depth or resonance here that it’s disturbing. Ketcham had a horrendous personal life; his first marriage went to ruin, and his first wife Alice, whom he named the strip’s mother after, died after losing a battle with addiction. That gets about two paragraphs in the book. Golfing with Bing Crosby, however, merits a section for itself. His second marriage ended in divorce; that gets a paragraph. However, he readily supplies anecdotes about golfing with Charles Schulz. His own son, the eponymous Dennis, came back from Vietnam with PTSD and became estranged from his father. Ketcham omits that entirely. But there’s plenty of detail about getting a fancy car shipped to him while he was living overseas. You can’t help but believe that, if this is the level of emotional detachment the man wandered through life with, it’s no wonder he had so many family troubles.

Fanta’s best archival project continued this fall with the publication of the fourth volume of THE COMPLETE PEANUTS. This addition covers 1957-58, and it sees the strip finding its artistic identity. The characters also really fall into place here as far as their relationships go. In particular, Snoopy begins to slip into some of his more familiar gags that you’d see throughout the years, particularly his battles for Linus’ blanket.

As well as the artistic identity of the strip and characters, Schulz clearly made large strides in his grasp of timing and motion during these years. There’s a sense that he was watching the world around him, maybe incorporating some of what he saw out of the animated cartoons of the time, and put those lessons to use. Production value aside, this is the era when PEANUTS elevated itself and became one of the most beautiful things we’ll ever see on the comics page.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Robert Crumb’s work, so it was with some trepidation that I sat down to read THE COMPLETE CRUMB COMICS VOL.17. I have generally felt like his work reads as unfocused and that he tends to lose his way in trying to tell a story, and the reader winds up nowhere at the end. And while that holds true for a few of the strips in this volume, you can also see some direct growth in Crumb’s abilities here as well.

Actually, he fesses up to his storytelling problems and discusses why a couple of the pieces in this book don’t show those issues in his introduction to the work. Crumb had been given the opportunity by Hollywood to do some screenplay work, and it forced him to confront some of his limitations as an artist. It’s rare that an introduction truly offers a great deal of insight to a work, but this one is a must read.

Rounding out the book is a ton of random material done for magazine and comics covers, party posters, wedding and birth announcements, and more. I’m not sure how much a random reader would get out of trying Crumb for the first time here, but you at least have to give a guy credit who loves his women with a little junk in the trunk and is loud and proud about it.

Our final archival effort this week is KRAZY AND IGNATZ: THE COMPLETE FULL PAGE COMIC STRIPS 1935-36 by George Herriman. In a certain way, the effort needed to put together these Krazy Kat archives is much more difficult; the strip appeared in some unusual papers and places that were poorly archived, if at all, during the early part of the twentieth century, so finding the material has proven to be somewhat tricky.

Indeed, unlike DENNIS or PEANUTS, Fanta has had to rely on the kindness of strangers and the largesse of some private collectors in order to put books like this together. This volume actually contains a supplement of material they had been trying to find for the previous book but had been unable to locate.

Of course, you wouldn’t go to such an effort if it wasn’t worth it, and KRAZY is one of those strips that certainly was. There’s a beautiful warmth and grace to these strips, and Herriman’s art was ahead of its time in grace and complexity. While Krazy Kat may not have achieved the pop cultural icon status of a Dennis or Charlie Brown, that doesn’t mean he or his cast of wondrous characters should be tossed aside and forgotten as so many others have been. If you get a chance, take a look and check one of his volumes out.

See you in seven.

Review materials may be sent to: Marc Mason, P.O. Box 26732, Tempe, AZ 85285. You can also find me at Happy Nonsense and The Comics Waiting Room

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