Arf! The life and hard times of Little Orphan Annie, 1935-1945

This massive, oversize volume collects ten years worth of classic "Little Orphan Annie" strips, from July 1, 1935 to Christmas Day, 1945... It is some of the most compelling comicstrip reading you'll ever encounter, drawing you in from start to finish with its forceful documentation of the times, from the Great Depression to the end of World War Two. Creator Harold Gray had fairly weird politics, a robust mix of rugged capitalist conservatism, stern optimism and socially-oriented populism, with fiesty, forthright Annie as his eyes on the world. The artwork is a delight, with its bold use of black-and-white, and elegant framing... Mostly, though, there's Annie, always an appealing character, even amid the slow-moving and sometimes wooden dramas... Trust me: if you pick this book up, you'll be very, very happy!

I recently saw a performance of "Little Orphan Annie." I got to wondering about the comic strip. This book has selections from the comic strip from 1935 to 1945. The book is a brick; it is about five pounds. The pages are not numbered, but there are easily 500 pages here. You can read six strips at a time, three on the left, and three on the right. The date for each strip is right above the strip. It is easy to see why the strip was so popular. This was a hard book to put down. The stories are fun and entertaining. You do have to ignore many unlikely events. The book shows an interesting contrast between how there have been some great changes over the last seventy years, and how many things are still the same. For example in one of the threads there is a discussion of how Warbucks might be developing atomic energy. There is another story of Nazis taking over a castle in the United States. Often Annie is in trouble and it is hard to get to a phone. From incidents like this you can see some of the changes over the last seventy years. Nowadays with so many people having cell phones, Annie would have been able to avoid lots of problems with a quick phone call. Then on the flip side so many of the problems Annie dealt with are motivated by common themes through all of literature, greed, jealousy, malice, and so on. Annie often has to endure some terrible situation, but always in the end things work out. The only reason I didn't give this five stars is because this book has selections from the ten year period, and huge chunks are missing. Most of the time it isn't that noticeable, but ever once in awhile a story would start to wrap up, and then the book would jump to strips published a couple months later without a complete conclusion. I would rather have had a book with the complete selection of five years, than to have a partial selection over a ten year period. All in all this is a fun book. If you are looking for some hours of entertainment, and you are interested in knowing more about Little Orphan Annie, this is a good book to read.

This book is an outstanding collection of the cartoons thatmade Little Orphan Annie a comic legend.This book gives you agood history of the life and times of Little Orphan Annie.Youare able to meet Daddy Warbucks,Punjab,Sandy and the other characters who made up the life of Little Orphan Annie.If youare a fan of collector comics this is the book for you.

Harold Gray had his own philosophy, which is reflected in the Little Orphan Annie strip. This collects the daily (as opposed to Sunday) comic strips through much of World War II. Many of the things depicted then are still with us: Gray had a good finger on the pulse of the human psyche. With all of that, Gray has created a bunch of interesting, often comoplex, characters, many motivated to do their best by a subteen orphan girl.