Description:
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.Brief description:
Chris Ware is a writer and artist and has contributed graphic fiction and thirty-two covers to The New Yorker since 1999. The author of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, which won the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, and Building Stories, which was chosen as a Top 10 fiction book by both the Times and Time in 2012, his most recent Rusty Brown was finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein award and named among the New York Times' top 100 Books of 2019.
His work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York and the Galerie Martel in Paris. In 2021, Ware received the Grand Prix de la Ville d'Angoulême and a solo retrospective of his work was presented at the Centre Pompidou in 2022, traveling on to venues in Switzerland, Italy, Holland and Spain, before making its only US appearance in May 2026 at the Billy Ireland Library and Museum in Columbus, Ohio.Review Quotes: "THESE STRIPS REFLECT AN INVENTIVENESS ON A PAR WITH MASTERS LIKE WINDSOR MCCAY AND WILL EISNER..."