Wayback Whensday – Not So Olden Times
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An addition to your “Complete” Calvin and Hobbes to make it complete, the Complete Tom the Dancing Bug, and the Deer Hunting sports cartoons of Gregg Klees.
Let’s start off with a reminder that there is only one day left to be a part of the Kickstarter that guarantees you receive volumes one and two of Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling collecting the strips from 1990-1998.
Available at that Kickstarter is a slipcased complete set of volumes one through 8.
Yesterday saw the 40th anniversary of one of the greatest comic strips of all time.
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson can also be had in a collected box set.
Currently at a discounted price from Amazon or at full price from other AMP retailers.
And if you print the above Calvin and Hobbes and wedge it into the pages where they print the alternate strip for November 28, 1985 you really will have the complete newspaper Calvin and Hobbes comics.
Before we leave the books here’s Steve Smith at Panels & Prose with a roundup of some recent collections of old comic strips for the discriminating comics readers.
We have already reviewed some of the major 2025 comic reprint releases from major publishers: the reissue of Sunday Press’s Society is Nix, the anniversary celebrations of Peanuts, Hagar and Beetle Bailey as well as Cathy, and the resurfacing if Rea Irvin’s The Smythes. But this year saw a number of self-publishers bring back everything from Sky Masters of the Space Patrol to Milt Gross. I wanted to devote one round-up that highlights these laudable efforts and the often-obscure treasures they have unearthed.
Classic Comics Press laudably finished its 8-volume run of the complete Cisco Kid recently. The detailed realism of Jose Luis Salinas comes through in these books, restored by CCP publisher Charles Pelto. Salinas was a master of the expressive close-up.
Smith reviews recent Milt Gross, Cisco Kid, Sky Masters, Carol Day, and Drift Marlo collections.
The Milwaukee Journal Deer Hunting Cartoons
Paul A. Smith regales Milwaukee Journal Sentinel readers with memories from the past (or here):
From 1940 to the mid-1970s and again in the 1980s and 1990s, the Milwaukee Journal published a hunting cartoon before the Wisconsin gun deer season in November.
The cartoons were drawn by staff artists. Journal artist Tom Rost created the first ones, followed over the years by Ludwig Cinatl Jr., Mel Kishner and Gregg Klees.
The tradition had been paused for a handful of years when in 1982, Klees, a Milwaukee native with lots of experience in graphic arts but none in hunting, got the assignment to resurrect the cartoon.
The Journal Sentinel provides a gallery of the Gregg Klees hunting cartoons. Use the Ctrl and + buttons (or whatever you Mac users do) to supersize the illustration to fully appreciate the effort Klees put into the art.
He went on to produce 12 deer hunting cartoons for the paper, including one all-female edition. He estimates each took 80 hours of drawing to produce. Klees retired in 1995 after 33 years at Journal Communications.
Gregg Klees, “now 86,” abides.
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