American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide

American Newspaper Comics is a hefty 624 page hardback with a cover as inviting as its subject. Technicolour tones radiate warmth and a four‐colour fringe of cartoon faces grabs the eye, recalling Sunday mornings of broadsheets and ink‐smudged fingers. So forgive the reader initially disappointed to discover not comics but hundreds of double‐columned black‐and‐white pages, each packed tight with capsule paragraphs, a seeming jumble of dates and proper nouns. This is not a case of false advertising. Indeed, the book's subtitle is An Encyclopedic Reference Guide, not “an encyclopedia”. A reader hoping for short histories, biographical details, and notes...