INTERLUDE IN CALIFORNIA: PETER MARESCA

In Palo Alto, I called on Peter Maresca. publisher extraordinaire of vintage Sunday funnies. Maresca found a cache of turn-of-the-last-century Sunday funnies years ago and was enchanted. When he couldn’t find a publisher to publish a book of these treasures, he became a publisher himself. Beginning with two volumes of Little Nemo Sunday pages -- printed the same giant size as they appeared when initially published in the first decade of the 20^th century -- Maresca has published six other collections. The most recent is Forgotten Fantasy, over 150 fantasy comic strips from 1900-1915, including such specimens as: Wee Willie Winkie and The Kin-der-Kids, The Explorigator, Naughty Pete, Nibsy, Jungle Imps and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.

Other Sunday Press Books titles include: George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, featuring the greatest Sunday pages from 1916 to 1944 in their original size and colors, with 20 other Herriman Sunday comics, most never reprinted before; Queer Visitors from the Land of Oz, long-hidden treasures from the Land of Oz, the complete Sunday series by L. Frank Baum and Walt McDougall, and the 1904 Scarecrow and the Tinman by W.W. Denslow—plus more full-size Oz and McDougall comics; The Upside-Down World of Gustave Verbeek, the complete run of Verbeek's The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo, and Loony Lyrics of Lulu, and select Sundays from Adventures of the Tiny Tads; and Sundays with Walt and Skeezix, the best of Frank King’s Gasoline Alley Sunday comics, starting from the very first Sunday in 1921, featuring King’s innovations in art, layout, and storytelling that brought a new warmth and style to the medium at the dawn of the Golden Age of newspaper comic strips. They are all described in loving detail at sundaypressbooks.com.

Pete’s forthcoming volume, Society Is Nix, will include the very first Katzenjammer Kids (in which there are three, not just two, mischief-makers), the first Happy Hooligan, and a few Yellow Kid strips that didn’t make it into any other previous tome. And more.

Here’s a picture of me and Pete, next to a picture of me and Morrie Turner, who we’ll meet at our next posting. Then, at the posting after that, we’ll visit Tom Yeates in Jenner, California.