Walt and Skeezix: Book One, 1921 & 1922: Book One

I have been a fan of the comic strip, Gasoline Alley for my entire life. This collection of daily strips from the years 1921 and 1922, tell the story of Walt, a bachelor and car fanatic, who awakes one morning to find a foundling on his door step. He decides to raise the boy and names him Skeezix. When he isn't taking care of Skeezix, Walt and his friends are usually out in the alley, working on their cars. Back when these strips were created, the automobile was new invention that everyone was excited about and eager to experience. Cars back then, like with most new technology, had many problems and their owners needed to keep fiddling with then in order for them to work properly. The strip follows the daily lives of, Walt and his friends from the alley. The pace of the story seems slower than comic strips you find in today's newspapers. This helps you get to know the characters and I feel is reflective of what life was probably like 85 years ago. This is a wonderful collection and includes biographical information and many photos of the cartoonist, Frank King and his family, taken from around the time these strips were drawn. This book is a treasure, buy it!

Buy this book ! It is outstanding. There is a 50+ page biography of the strip's creator, Frank King, and then all the daily strips in order for the years 1921 and 1922. The biography provides context for the strip. Then there is the strip, itself. It makes for fascinating reading because a window is provided for life at the time. My favorite part was when Walt and friends went on a driving tour out west. Driving was certainly a different experience back then. Buy this book if you are interested in history or if you just like a good story. You will not be disappointed !

Gasoline Alley was created by Frank King and first appeared Sunday, November 24, 1918. The daily began about a year later, Aug 23, 1919. After many changes of artist and writer (many fans think Dick Moores was the greatest -- see Comics Revue monthly to decide for yourself) the strip still runs both Sunday and daily in newspapers today (2005), just thirteen years short of its hundredth aniversary. The most memorable event in the strip, chronicled in this book, is when Walt Wallet finds on his doorstep a baby basket, containing Skeezix, on February 14, 1921. (Popeye, in the Thimble Theatre strip, would find Swee'pea in a similar basket ten years later). The daily Frank King Gasoline Alley seems a bit slow and talky by today's faster paced standard, but his full color Sunday pages are often marvels of color and design. For some of the best full pages, see Bill Blackbeard's The Comic Strip Century. Frank King died in 1969.

The first volume of the proposed complete publication of Frank King's "Gasoline Alley," dailies printed in an agreeable two strip per page format, properly dated and containing 1921 and 1922. The characters are alive and grow older even as we ask where did this Skeezix come from? Who is this Mrs. Blossom, really? How does she support herself, and exactly what is going on or not between her and Walt? Ah, you will have to buy volume 2 to find out or not... Frank King drew in a simple, realistic style and put great thought into the characterization of his stars. This is not your average gag a day strip. Recommended for public and academic libraries, as well as for gentle readers of vintage cartoon strips and Frank King aficionados.

Finally, the first part in a projected series that reprints the most underrated masterpiece in American comic strips. There was no flash or (for the most part) melodrama to Frank King's Gasoline Alley; just an amusing look at four buddies endlessly tinkering with their cars in the alley behind their homes. Then, a few years after the strip began, the one bachelor among them, Walt, is left with a newborn baby on his doorstep. From there the strip gains the stride that has never failed it in its nearly 90 year history. Gasoline Alley is a chronicle of the upbringing of that baby, and the love between Walt and Skeezix. The strip would have been a classic with that subject alone, but King widened the Alley universe and populated it with dozens of unforgettable characters. As readers went about their everyday lives, so too did the Alley denizens, through Prohibition, the Depression, war and prosperity. There were births and deaths, laughter and sorrow, all rendered by the deceptively simple lines of Frank King's pen. As an added bonus, the book is crammed with never-before-seen photographs of King, his homes, the actually locale of Gasoline Alley and Robert, his son who became the model for Skeezix. Did I mention I kind of like this book? Buy it and discover a family you really would like to know.