The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics

The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics includes a number of stories that are indeed classic: three Barks stories, three Sugar and Spike stories by Sheldon Mayer, two classic Little Lulu stories (and one not so classic, as I mentioned before), and one (only one?) of George Carlson's stories from "Jingle Jangle Comics." If you're familiar with comics history -- particularly if you've read The Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics -- you'll be familiar with these artists, if not necessarily the particular stories chosen. But to the "layman," these stories will be revelations.

The trouble is that it includes even more stuff that is far from classic. Some are simply hackwork: Nutsy Squirrel, Intellectual Amos (represented, incomprehensively, by three stories), Alix in Folly-land, Supermouse, Billy and Bonny Bee, Flip and Flopper. Rover may not be hackwork, but it's dull. Some stories are interesting but hardly classic: among these are The Fox and the Crow, Egbert the Elephant, and a Dick Briefer Frankenstein story. (Going by this story, claims that Briefer was a great artist are wildly overstated.)

Then there are the inferior stories by great artists. As I stated in another earlier post, I include the non-Lulu John Stanley stories in this category. And while I'm a huge Pogo fan, the Walt Kelly non-Pogo stories included here are depressing: cute mice and bunnies and Disneyfied dwarves engaged in lukewarm gags or adventures. For that matter, I was disappointed by the Pogo story included here. The Pogo stories in The Smithsonian Book were better. I know I'm in the minority here, but while I love Sugar and Spike, I've never cared for Mayer's earlier strip Scribbly. And while some of Mayer's funny animal stories are indeed classics, the ones included in The Toon Treasury aren't.

I know I'm also in the minority in not liking Kurtzman's Hey, Look! strips (I'll admit, I did like a couple of the ones in here, but even those are hardly classics). Likewise, though Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, the editors, may have felt bad about their decision to omit any Plastic Man stories, Cole's Burp the Twerp one-pagers are not an acceptable substitute. In fact, most of the covers and one-page strips included could have been omitted with no loss, and the extra space used for another George Carlson story, or one of the stories where Little Lulu tells Alvin a story.

A successful anthology of this sort should make you think "Wow, how much more great stuff that I've never heard of is out there?" This anthology, on the other hand, is more likely to leave you suspecting that this vein must be nearly tapped out. The only real discoveries here for me were two Alice in Wonderland-based stories by Dave Berg. Yes, that Dave Berg. I can't claim that these are classics, but I would like to see more of these stories. It's also a surprise how much Berg's art in these stories resembles Will Elder's EC art.

Incidentally, lovers of Tintin, Asterix or Dr. Slump, to name only three, will be surprised to learn that only the United States produced classic children's comics. (This is particularly ironic, of course, considering the book's editors.)