THE PUCK STORY

What Fools These Mortals Be:
The Story of Puck, America’s First and Most Influential Magazine of Color Political Cartoons
By Michael Alexander Kahn and Richard Samuel West
Foreword by Bill Watterson

328 11x12-inch pages
color
IDW Library of American Comics
hardcover
$59.99

The title of this book is virtually an annotation, but it does not sufficiently emphasize the volume’s big attraction — that it publishes in glorious color a vast selection of Puck’s political cartoons from the weekly magazine’s first English language issue on March 14, 1877 through December 2, 1916, just 22 months before its official demise in September 1918. The cartoons are arrayed through thematic chapters — politics and government, business and labor, foreign relations, race and religion, social issues, personalities — but the longest chapter, 100 pages, is on presidential politics. Each chapter is introduced with a short essay, and a 5-page history of the magazine sets the scene at the beginning.

The cartoons appear one to a page, a generous allocation of space that, at last, gives the spectacular art suitable display. Each cartoon is titled, dated, and succinctly annotated to orient the modern reader to the antique issue the cartoon addressed. And the quality of reproduction is, simply, superb.

Most of the cartoons are by the magazine’s founder, Joseph Keppler, but these pages resonate with the work and names of some of the nation’s greatest 19^th century cartoonists — Bernard Gillam and Louis Dalrymple and James A. Wales chief among them, but also Frederick Opper, Eugene “Zim” Zimmerman, C.J. Taylor, J.S. Pughe, Harrison Fisher, Rose O’Neill (surprisingly), F.M. Howarth, and Will Crawford, among other minor lights.

Puck was not revolutionary, West says, “but it was different. ... Puck looked unlike anything else on the newsstand. It was the first magazine in America to publish chromolithograph plates on a weekly basis. It led the way in an explosion of color in American printing during the last quarter of the 19^th century, inspiring newspapers to follow its lead, which led to, of course, the advent of the comic strip.”

As a political commentator, Puck’s high-water mark was the 1884 Presidential campaign. With a circulation of 125,000, it was influential as no other magazine has been since.

The Tattooed Man cartoon series held Republican candidate James G. Blaine up to scorn by covering his body with words and phrases that reminded viewers of the politician’s misdeeds over the years. Said West: “Since Blaine lost New York State by only a few thousand votes and hence the election, many attributed the loss to Bernard Gillam’s cartoon.”