With promotional materials laid in.

In five thematic sections, this anthology is a counter history of comics, containing nearly 30 undiscovered visionary American cartoonists from 1900-1969. These artists, including Harry Grant Dart, Milt Gross, Charles M. Payne, Harry Hershfield and Charles Forbell, foreshadowed and influenced the comics medium of today.

Before there was Robert Crumb, there was Herbert Crowley. If you don't recognize that name, you're not alone. Crowley is one of nearly 30 American cartoonists featured in this eclectic anthology, artists whose work--created between 1900 and 1969--was overshadowed by more successful contemporaries. Art Out of Time at last gives these pioneers the showcase they deserve, reprinting--in most cases for the first time since their initial publication--complete comic books and strips by such visionaries as Raymond Ewer, Howard Nostrand, Ogden Whitney, and Dick Briefer. These under-recognized artists often deviated from the thematic and graphic conventions of the comics medium--and influenced Crumb, Art Spiegelman, and others--making this superb anthology a true "counter history," the untold story of an underground that wasn't.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dan Nadel is the author of Art Out of Time and the editor of several books, including Gary Panter and The Wilco Book. He is the owner of PictureBox, Inc., a Grammy Award --winning packaging and publishing company with more than fifty titles in print, and the co-editor of the Eisner-nominated magazine Comics Comics. His essays and criticism have appeared in many publications, including the Washington Post, Bookforum, and Eye. As a curator, Nadel has mounted exhibitions for Portugal Arte 10 in Lisbon, the Athens 2007 Biennale in Greece, and numerous other venues in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Paris. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. There are lots of anthologies of the work of the past century's famous cartoonists, but Nadel has done a real service in putting together this collection of 29 marvelous nearly unknown comic strip and comic book artists. Many are reprinted from yellowing newsprint--in a few cases, like Walter Quermann's late-'30s newspaper strip Hickory Hollow Folks, from the only copies of their work still extant. Only a few, like Ogden Whitney's poker-faced '60s comic book Herbie, have ever been reprinted before. Nadel's five categories, "Exercises in Exploration," "Slapstick," "Acts of Drawing," "Words in Pictures" and "Form and Style," sometimes seem arbitrary; the biographical notes at the back are informative but all too brief. Still, it's hard to argue with the comics themselves. Charles Forbell's 1913 newspaper strip Naughty Pete looks like it had a huge influence on Chris Ware; Gustave Verbeek's bonkers formal experiment The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo, from 1904, is still hilarious and sui generis; Rory Hayes's crude but meticulous horror stories from 1969's Bogeyman Comics, the most recent pieces here, were decades ahead of their time. Contemporary cartoonists--and their fans--have a lot to learn from the freewheeling, witty, try-anything-twice artistic attitude of the pieces Nadel's assembled.

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