1921 & 1922
By Frank King
Published by Drawn & Quarterly
Until just last year, Gasoline Alley was known only to a few. Even though the comic is, unfortunately, still carried in some daily newspapers, few people outside of the cartoon world were aware of the strips majestic history. Gasoline Alley has been continuously published since 1918, and it's succeeded in being one of the only newspaper strips that's been published in "real time." The day the strip appears in papers is the day the events contained in its four boxes occur, and the next day, and so on. And it has been this way since 1918. As was implied earlier, this has become slightly unfortunate, as the strip is (obviously) no longer written and drawn by it's creator, Frank King, and it has now passed through enough hands that todays Gasoline Alley carries little resemblance to the beauty and brilliance that King gave it until his retirement in the 1950's. Another unfortunate fact is that although numerous reprints of early Gasoline Alley have appeared throughout its 88 year history, none had pursued a chronological exploration of the strip, often choosing to focus instead on thematic collections. While the art and whimsical stories of Gasoline Alley shine through even in those mismatched bags, they negated what makes Gasoline Alley such fascinating reading--the day to day growth and character development, most of all, it's brilliant ability to focus on the power of time, be it through the development of a romantic relationship, the falling apart of a friendship, or the growth of a young man.
When the Canadian publishing company Drawn & Quarterly enlisted Chris Ware to edit their new chronological reprint collection of Walt & Skeezix, the decision was made not to begin in 1918, but to start with 1921, the time period when then-Chicago Tribune editor, Joseph Patterson, asked Frank King to insert an infant into the storyline. As Ware discovered, King happily obliged, using his own son as the model for "Skeezix," having the infant boy show up as a foundling on the doorstep of Walt Wallet, the strips sole bachelor. Skeezix is now an octogenarian, and is still one of the main features of the strips current incarnation. The first of the Drawn & Quarterly series, titled Walt & Skeezix, carries all the strips from those first two years of his introduction. It's brilliant work, containing what is some of the most detailed art ever seen on a comic page, re-printed in it's original size. It's somewhat dated, especially in the case of the African-American nanny character, an ugly artifact of the racial attitudes of that time period. Taken at random, the book can seem incredibly slow, even somewhat boring--but when read in order, the strip is almost unbearably wonderful stuff. Slowly, methodically, we read the most simple of stories--a mildly intelligent young man, in love with both his hobbies and friends, finds himself in a position of unwanted and difficult responsibility, and begins the intensely emotional journey to becoming a father. Skeezix grows only the slightest in these few years--he doesn't become a more active presence until his later years, he is, after all, only an infant--but that's perfectly fine. Walt is a fascinating character, and reading about his unwieldy efforts to grow into his new job as caregiver is a frequently amusing story, with only the slightest nod to the somewhat sad circumstances he finds himself in. Near the waning months of the books last collected year, Walt begins to find himself attracted to a freshly arrived single woman, and it is these pages that the story, already brilliant, rockets into the realm of innovation. Unlike any art form available at that time or now, a day-to-day comic strip became the most honest place on earth to tell the story of a man falling in love. Unlike the movies and books that now control the telling of those stories, Walt is never able to disappear from us--his every feeling, his every emotion falls across each page. As the weeks of story are flipped, Walt is torn through every aspect of a courtship, from the first date to the morning after, and the reader is alongside him the entire time. By the books close, the two lovers still seem at odds with each other by circumstance alone, kept apart by their agonizing inability to tell one another how they feel (which, considering the time period it appeared, is as accurate as King could've described).
With the recent publication of Book 2, and the successful sales figures on Book 1, Drawn & Quarterly seem likely to continue the plan set out by Ware, and publish the entire King run. Whether this happens or not (small presses are notorious for beginning projects like these only to fall apart in the early years) Book One is easily available, and it's time for Gasoline Alley to leave the dark halls of neglected works, and enter the canon of truly masterful American art that it's always belonged in.
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