Walt & Skeezix: Book One by Frank King - A Gasoline Alley Collection

edited and designed by Chris Ware

Well, first there was the Complete Peanuts, and now there's the Complete Gasoline Alley. This volume collects only the dailes, due to the fact that the Sundays were gigantic and designed as an organic whole and so not suitable to be broken down and squeezed into this book's format (Many fine examples of the early Gasoline Alley Sunday pages are available in Drawn & Quarterly Volume Three and Volume Four, and one Sunday is reproduced here, just to give you a taste.) That said, this book, lovingly designed by Chris Ware -- think McSweeney's #13, only not quite as elaborate -- is, from a production standpoint, a true work of art. The book begins on January 1, 1921, several years into the the strip's continuity, but just before baby Skeezix is discovered on Walt's doorstep and so a perfect place to start the generational saga that Gasoline Alley was to become. The introductory notes and appendix are expansive, illustrated and accompanied by many, many rare photographs heretofore unseen by just about anyone outside the King clan. This volume -- like those in the Complete Peanuts -- contains two complete years, 1921 & 1922 in this case, but with the difference that there are only two strips per page, instead of three, accurately reflecting the significantly larger size that comic strips were printed at during the time these strips originally appeared, compared to the Peanuts strips that began almost exactly thirty years later. While it's pretty safe to say that Gasoline Alley fans will be in seventh heaven while working their way through this volume, we believe that anyone interested in the early days of American comics strips should at least pick this book up and take a look at it. Gasoline Alley is populated by some of the most human and engaging characters in the history of comics.

retail price - $29.95
copacetic price - $25.47

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Walt & Skeezix, Book Two: 1923 & 1924
by Frank King
The second collection of Frank King's almighty classic, Gasoline Alley is currently gracing our humble shelves. Designed, once again, by Chris Ware, this volume has even more support material than the first collection. A lengthy introduction by comics scholar, Jeet Heer and end notes by Tim Samuelson are accompanied by an amazing selection of photographs from the King family album, sketches and watercolors, scrap-book clippings and other ephemera that together make an excellent frame for the over six-hundred daily strips this volume contains.
retail price - $29.95 copacetic price - $25.47

Walt & Skeezix, Book Three: 1925 & 1926
by Frank King
The third collection of classic Gasoline Alley dailies has arrived and is ready for reading. Designed, once again, by Chris Ware, and housing over six-hundred daily strips, this volume continues to be an excellent package at a reasonable price.
retail price - $29.95 copacetic price - $25.47

Walt & Skeezix is the first-ever collection of the classic twentieth-century newspaper strip Gasoline Alley, and Book One is the beginning of a handsome multivolume series edited and designed by comics virtuoso Chris Ware.

Chris Ware has often cited Gasoline Alley as one of his favorite comic strips ever, and he has lovingly edited and designed Walt & Skeezix: Book One, the first-ever collection of the classic newspaper strip created by one of the pioneering giants of American comic strips, Frank King. Not only does this volume reprint the first two years of the strip in which King’s friendly and nostalgic imagination took shape but each book in the series features an eighty-page color introduction by Jeet Heer of Canada’s National Post. Each introduction will also feature never-before-seen archival photos and ephemera from the personal collection of King’s granddaughter. Walt & Skeezix is not just a collection of a classic comic strip—it is the story of a great American cartoonist.

Few cartoon strips have this kind of longevity and quality; Gasoline Alley has been with us since 1919 and is a gentle mirror held up to ordinary American life in the early twentieth century. It started as a mild satire on the post-WWI “craze” for cars, but it wasn’t long before it developed into a quirky family story attracting an audience of more than thirty million readers in four hundred–plus newspapers. Gasoline Alley, an affectionate portrait of modern living, is remembered for being the first strip to set itself in contemporary American history. The characters of Gasoline Alley grow up, go to war, and have grandchildren. The strip always reflects the kind, sweet pace of life.