Top Dog: Marmaduke at 50

Everyone's favorite Great Dane is captured through the decades in this "best-of" volume. Having had two Great Danes, I have always found the Marmaduke cartoons capture the best of these elegant dogs who want to sit on your lap, lie in your bed, eat from your table, and be your best friend. The comic panel has been around half-a-century and is in over twenty countries for a reason: it is wonderful.

When I was in my twenties I owned a German Shepard big enough and strong enough to pull me around. While he was gentle, he was also powerful enough to chew the strips off my car, which he did more than once. Therefore, the giant Marmaduke depicted in the strip will always remind me of Pepper. If you have ever owned a powerful, yet very gentle dog, this strip will pull at your heart. The facial expressions Anderson has Marmaduke demonstrate also remind me of how Pepper used to look at me when he wanted a dog treat.

This book was better than I expected. The book is jam-packed with Marmaduke comics and is colorful and fun to look at. Great for old and new Marmaduke fans.

This collection is A WONDERFUL RETROSPECTIVE on the past fifty years of more than 18,000 newpaper appearances by Marmaduke. Brad Anderson created the beloved character of MARMADUKE when he was in high school, and this collection provides a perspective on the gradual evolution of not only Brad's style, but also Marmaduke's character as well as the changing nature of newspaper cartoons. The book opens with an interesting foreword by Jim Davis and a wonderful cartoon which he penned of Garfield and Marmaduke together. After a brief introduction, the book is divided into six sections organized by decade; each section is prefaced by a brief comment from Brad Anderson. The sections are The 1950's: Marmaduke Takes Off; The 1960's: A Dog's Life; The 1970's: A Dog for All Seasons; The 1980's: Dog Gone Funny; The 1990's: The Greatest of Danes, and finally 2000 and Beyond: The Modern Times of Marmaduke. As Marmaduke devotees would expect, most of the cartoons are simple single panel black and white incidents which capture the essence of what made the strip so enduring, the constant humor of the situations which seemed to make Marmaduke a real dog who reminded his fans of how human animals can seem. There is also an interesting brief interview with the cartoonist at the conclusion of the book. What differentiates this collection from the over two dozen previous collections (including an early one which turned me into a lifelong fan while still a high school student in the late 1950's), is that it spans the entire period of Marmaduke's existence, beginning even before he had gradually morphed from a generic huge mutt into the lovable Great Dane that he is today. Usually I can easily pick out a few personal favorites from a collection such as this, but I have tried to do so several times and always come up with a list encompassing at least half the cartoons in this collection. Sometimes the text is the key, but often it is Marmaduke's body language or facial expression that evokes my enjoyment of the scene before me. In summary, there are some cartoons to smile at, some to enjoy life with Marmaduke, and some that will cause you to roar with laughter whether you are seeing them for the first time or the umpteenth time. In fact, one of the nice surprises was the memories this book occasionally evoked of long forgotten encounters with some of these cartoons. If you have been a fan for as long as I have, this will provide a nice stroll down memory lane. If you are a recent fan, you'll have the joy of discovering some long hidden gems. And this book should be kept in a place where you and your guests can frequently leaf through it for the smiles that it will occasion; it is not a book to be quickly read and then consigned to a bookshelf where in all likelihood it will be forgotten, My only caveat is that my five star review assumes that you will buy this book at a significant discount from its full cover price, which is exorbitant. As a Marmaduke fan, dog lover

does anyone remember when marmaduke guest-starred in an episode of Benson? it was one of that series' best shows. hopefully it comes out on dvd. this book is also good, but nearly as good as that benson episode.