This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

"It’s certainly Fantagraphics’ week, with the release of two amazing reprint volumes." – Johanna Draper Carlson, Comics Worth Reading

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes
by Carl Barks

240-page full-color 7.5" x 10.25" hardcover • $24.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-474-0

"Fantagraphics' reprinting of the complete Carl Barks duck comics, wisely, starts not with the master funny-animal cartoonist's earliest material but with a period in which he was firing on all cylinders: the late-'40s era of grand adventure stories, four of which appear here alongside some shorter stories, one-page gags, and explanatory material. Shorter version: this is where you'll find the square eggs." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

"I was so impressed by Fanta’s Mickey Mouse: Race to Death Valley, a book that I would have never guessed I would enjoy so much, that I’m eagerly looking forward to discovering this hidden treasure." – Johanna Draper Carlson, Comics Worth Reading

"The importance of Carl Barks' influence on comics cannot be overstated." – Librairie Drawn & Quarterly

Pogo - Vol. 1 of the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: "Through the Wild Blue Wonder"
by Walt Kelly

308-page black & white/color 11.25" x 9.25" hardcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-56097-869-5

"And if I’m really binging, I’d add the first volume of Fantagraphics’ Pogo collection..." – Brigid Alverson, Robot 6

"Splurge-wise, how unfair is the universe for making the color, one-volume Bone available on the same day as Fantagraphic’s Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Volume 1?... Bone and Pogo are especially impossible to pick between, even with the massive price difference." – Michael May, Robot 6

"...[T]he collection of Walt Kelly’s Pogo that hits stores this week is gorgeous. I have some of Fantagraphics’ previous Pogo volumes and this one blows them away." – Roger Ash, Westfield Comics Blog

"It’s difficult, when contemplating reading such an acclaimed classic, not to worry that the material won’t live up to the expectations created by the praise, or to wonder if the strip was fresher in its original time. (Especially with strips that comment on contemporaneous events, especially political ones.) I have no fear with Pogo, because if nothing else, the characters are so darn cute and well-cartooned, I know I’ll enjoy seeing them." – Johanna Draper Carlson, Comics Worth Reading

"Fantagraphics has been promising a complete reprint of Walt Kelly's wonderful comic strip for four years or so now (after reprinting the first few years' worth in paperback in the '90s). They apparently had some difficulty finding high-quality sources, but they've really gotten it right -- this looks fantastic. And this volume actually delivers more than its title suggests: besides the 1949 and 1950 syndicated strips (daily and Sunday), it includes Pogo's four-month run, from October 1948 to January 1949, in the New York Star." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

"Another big, big, BIG one is Walt Kelly. Essential satire from a master, Kelly's strip ran from 1948 until his death in 1973. This collection was first announced in 2007 and has finally arrived. Necessary stuff, comics fans." – Librairie Drawn & Quarterly

Estonia: A Ramble Through the Periphery
by Alexander Theroux

352-page 6" x 9" hardcover with color illustrations • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-465-8

Oil and Water
by Steve Duin and Shannon Wheeler

144-page black & white 7.75" x 9.75" hardcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-492-4

"...[A]ll the really cool, must-have books are in the splurge category this week (as usual). In one corner, after years and years of fits and starts and delays and promises galore is the first volume of Fantagraphics Complete Pogo collection, Through the Wild Blue Wonder. In the other corner we have the first volume in Fantagraphics other, other, other big reprint project, Donald Duck, Lost in the Andes, which collects some great stories by the masterful Carl Barks.... Just forget about your budget this one time. Your bank account will understand." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Oh shit, Disney animation showdown. Walt Disney’s Donald Duck Vol. 1: Lost in the Andes presents the first in a line of hardcover Carl Barks reprints, newly re-colored with all of the supplements you’d expect; $28.99. In the opposite corner, Pogo – The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 1: Through The Wild Blue Wonder begins a comprehensive 12-book collection of the Walt Kelly strip in b&w and color; $39.99. And while I don’t think the 144-page, Deepwater Horizon spill-focused graphic novel Oil and Water has anything to do with Disney, it does mark a comics-writing appearance by longtime writer-on-comics Steve Duin, teamed with artist Shannon Wheeler; $19.99." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Rick Marschall and Warren Bernard’s Drawing Power is a provocative visual examination of the wonderful world of cartoon advertising.... Marschall and Bernard have mixed an unusual batch of artistic and economic history. After reading this book, you’ll never look at comic strips and capitalism the same way again." – Michael Taube, The Washington Post

• Review: "It's a little silly for me to do the full-disclosure tap dance... I'm quoted ten times in Kevin Avery's Paul Nelson biography-collection-tribute, Everything Is an Afterthought, and thanked prominently in the acknowledgments.... [The book is] better than you might figure.... With Nelson, the wild card was Avery, an unknown from Utah whose national track record starts here. But he's done inspired, diligent work. Constructed from a greater proportion of direct quotes than is normally deemed proper, the biography is doubly gripping as a result... And though the critical analyses that triggered this admiration shone less brightly than I'd hoped, the narrative writing I'd put less stock in compensated." – Robert Christgau, The Barnes & Noble Review

• Review: "Over the past decade, probably the single biggest frustration we've experienced here at The Copacetic Comics Company was the inability to offer customers the opportunity to experience the magic of Carl Barks in book form.... The influence on American culture of the Disney duck comic books Carl Barks wrote, penciled, inked and lettered for roughly a quarter century is incalculably large.... Carl Barks is one of the true titans of comic books, one of the very few who can hold their own with the likes of Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman and R. Crumb. His fluid cartooning and storytelling is simply unmatched.... Now, at last, ...his collected works will once again become available for North American readers... in what — based on the evidence of the first volume — is sure to be the most outstanding edition ever produced.... The Fantagraphics edition of The Carl Barks Library is ideal in almost every way and is sure to be the definitive edition of the works of this great comics master." – Bill Boichel (we presume), The Copacetic Comics Company

• Interview: Comics Bulletin's Jason Sacks sat down for a chat with Bill Schelly about chronicling the life and art of Joe Kubert: "Think of the effect he's had. It's like an amplifier. He's used amplification through all his students. His philosophy about good storytelling techniques, solid drawing fundamentals and all those things he's imbued in all those students who go out to every field of artistic endeavor and, in fact, internationally. So his effect is really international."

• Plugs: "Just in time for Christmas, Fantagraphics has published the first volumes of two archival comics series that promise to be amazing.... Carl Barks’s Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes — is a beautiful, 240-page, full-color collection... If you’ve got kids, it’s a terrific introduction to Barks’s DD mythos.... Walt Kelly’s Pogo was one of the great hilobrow comic strips of all time.... Go, Fantagraphics, go!" – HiLobrow

• Astrology: We totally almost missed that VICE talked to Dame Darcy about The Day of Elevens.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Barks, the artist, is a master cartoonist, drawing lively, expressive characters with a graceful sense of movement. His beautiful, detailed backgrounds plant the ducks in a fully realized world that adds weight to his storytelling.... But besides the entertaining plots, Barks’ appeal is in his characters. He gives his ducks many human frailties and while they usually try to do the right thing, they make mistakes, get angry, frustrated, and even fail. Fantagraphics Books... does its usual high quality work here as well. The design and layout of the book is a handy comic-book size hardcover with bright, colorful reproductions of the comics. Besides the comics, there are articles on Barks and analysis on each story... For both newcomers to Barks' work and diehard fans, [Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes] is a book that any comic book reader would love to find under the Christmas tree." – Rich Clabaugh, The Christian Science Monitor

• Review (Audio): Owen Craig, co-host of the Panel Culture podcast, looks at Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes by Carl Barks

• Interview: At The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon talks with Rich Tommaso about his coloring work on our Carl Barks Library series — "[Disney] said we didn't have to be so religious about it. They wanted to make sure the color for the ducks, the reds and blues and the yellows, that those were pretty much bang-on. But they agreed that there was a little bit of leeway. If something looked like a bad color choice, you could find something in the ballpark range of that color. So that's what I would do." — and about his own comics work

• Review: "All aspects of Kubert's career are touched on in this tome, which is loaded with beautiful colour reproductions of its subject's artwork and complemented by a lengthy and insightful critical commentary by comic book historian Bill Schelly. Over the course of the book's 224 pages, you can see quite clearly how Kubert's art evolved and how his storytelling skills developed, but also how his unique style, those striking touch and sinewy images that could have been rendered by no one else, has remained intact. As with Fantagraphics' previous coffee table comic art books, The Art of Joe Kubert makes you want to see more — all! — of the artist's work." – Miles Fielder, The List

• Review: "Frank Zappa once said 'most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.' However true that might be, Paul Nelson was one who most definitely could write. And he interviewed people who could talk, and plenty of people read what he wrote. Kevin Avery certainly read what Nelson wrote, and has now written Everything Is an Afterthought, which is both a biography of Nelson and a collection of his work, including some pieces that have never been published.... Like the best critics, Nelson was primarily a fan of what he wrote about, subjects that struck a chord with him. And here’s a bio and a collection of his work written by a fan of his." – Robert O'Connor, Spike Magazine

• Plugs: The Los Angeles Times "Hero Complex Holiday Gift Guide for 2011" includes Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes by Carl Barks and both volumes of The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec by Jacques Tardi

• Plug: Proud contributor to our first Walt Kelly Pogo volume Mark Evanier talks up the book on his blog: "It's a wonderful book and though I am a Consulting Editor — I think that's my title — I can rave about it because I deserve very little credit for its wonderfulness. Any book that properly presents the work of Mr. Kelly is going to be, by definition, wonderful...and Carolyn Kelly (daughter of Walt, companion of mine) and Fantagraphics Books made sure it was properly presented."

Plug: "...Michael Kupperman's new book [Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010]... has everything a boy could want, including Mark Twain on the track of the elusive yeti!... Albert Einstein is a major supporting player in the book (he and Twain open a detective agency, natch) and somehow it behooves me to remind everyone that in real life for really real, Einstein's granddaughter married a renowned bigfoot hunter. That is a fact you can look up on your computer!" – Jack Pendarvis

• Plug: At Seattlest Heather Logue's recommended lit events for the week include Peter Bagge's Black Friday signing at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery

• Interview: Robot 6's Tim O'Shea talks with Shannon Wheeler, with a couple of revealing behind-the-scenes tidbits about Oil and Water in the second half: "Steve [Duin] understands a scene really well. When all the characters visited the bird cleaning facility there was a large storytelling arc with multiple subplots. I would have been afraid to juggle so many elements. I would have focused on the single note of the horror of the facility. Steve isn’t afraid to trust the reader to understand. I’m a lot less trusting of the reader. Steve showed me how to have more faith in the narrative."

• Profile: At Babylon Falling Sean Stewart has an image- and quote-packed writeup of his visit with Spain Rodriguez (via Dan N. at TCJ.com)

• Profile: MTV's Liquid Television blog has a nice little writeup on Dash Shaw

• Behind the Scenes: At his blog, Blake Bell gives you another progress update on The Secret History of Marvel Comics, with some fun scans and photos

Bid on this original art by Stephen DeStefano for the cover of a Dutch Mickey Mouse comic — proceeds go to benefit Suz Strick, who suffers from endometriosis. (You can see some more of Stephen's Mickey artwork in the back matter of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 2: Trapped on Treasure Island.)

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "With [Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010] and the seventh issue of his Thrizzle series, Kupperman takes back the crown of Funniest Cartoonist Alive... Whatever direction he moves in, there is a consistent level of dizzying joy to be found in Kupperman’s work, a kind of humor that features dark and occasionally satirical edges but is mostly just a barrage of inspired wordplay, deadpan humor, and deceptively simple images." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

• Review: "...Barks truly was a master at the medium. We all have been hearing this for so long and for those who have not yet read any of his comics, this book [Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes] and the rest of the upcoming series should put all those doubts to rest. Carl Barks used ducks to shine a light on the human condition and make jokes while also making commentary on us all. Despite these stories being published in 1948 and 1949, they truly stand the test of time. But what was truly amazing about his work was that it appeals to both children and adults. ★★★★★" – Nick Boisson, Comics Bulletin

• Review: "Happily, Woodring never tries to offer up his own explanations for what transpires in his stories [in The Frank Book]. The closest he gets is some vague, oblique hints in this collection's afterword, but -- like those occasions when David Lynch pretends to try to enlighten viewers about his similarly challenging movies -- Woodring's clues only lead to more questions." – Dave Wallace, Comics Bulletin

• Review: "The no-nonsense mademoiselle Blanc-Sec returns for another round or two of occult mentalism and monster-mash madness... Don’t expect it to make any sense, you clearly won’t if you read and loved Volume One of Adele’s extraordinary adventures as I did. Indeed much like, what seems an odd comparison on the face of it I’ll grant you, Umbrella Academy you just have to enjoy the ever mounting sense of the ridiculous jammed in page after page, which Tardi is an absolute master at." – Jonathan Rigby, Page 45

• Plug: Newsarama's Zack Smith chats with humorist John Hodgman [squee] about the current state of comics: "It’s funny – when I started writing about comics a few years ago, I discovered a lot of new things, one of them being the Glenn Ganges comics by Kevin Huizenga. I just love his work."

• Interview: Live via digital recording, it's Mike Dawson's panel discussion with MariNaomi and Noah Van Sciver at the Minneapolis Indie Xpo earlier this month, presented as the new episode of the "TCJ Talkies" podcast at The Comics Journal

[The Comics Journal interns Ben Horak, Kara Krewer, Janice Lee and Jennifer Williams put together this series of discussion questions about Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 2: Trapped on Treasure Island by Floyd Gottfredson for use in book clubs. As this is intended for those who have read the book and contains spoilers, questions about specific storylines can be found behind the jump. – Ed.]

BACKGROUND

Find examples of Gottfredson's use of black to navigate the eye through the actions in the comic.

These adventure strips contain some dark subject matter, including lynching, cannibalism, murder and death. How does this reflect the public's state of mind during the Depression era?

How does Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse inform contemporary Mickey? In what ways has Mickey changed or evolved as a character?

[Read more...]

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Awards: Esperanza by Jaime Hernandez has been named by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association to the long list of nominations for the Over the Rainbow recommended reading list, one of only two (as far as I can tell from my quick skim) comics to be so included

• Plug: Pamela Paul of The New York Times asks "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" creator Jeff Kinney about his favorite books from childhood: "...[T]he works that stood head and shoulders above the rest were Carl Barks’s ‘Donald Duck’ and ‘Uncle Scrooge’ comics from the 1940s through the 1960s. Mr. Barks wrote tales of high adventure generously peppered with moments of high comedy.... Classics such as ‘Lost in the Andes,’ ‘Only a Poor Man’ and ‘A Christmas for Shacktown’ left a deep impression on me. Mr. Barks taught me that comics could be high art, and I consider his work to be the best storytelling I’ve experienced in any form. ...Fantagraphics has announced that it is publishing the Barks collection in beautiful hardcover books that do great honor to the cartoonist and his stories, and I can’t wait to buy them for my kids. Proof that great storytelling endures from generation to generation."

• Review: "This volume [Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes] reprints tales from December 1948 through August 1949, when Barks was in high feather as a creator of breathless adventures and light comedies for his Ducks... Great pop culture, great analysis. Scrooge is always searching for more gold, and there’s plenty here. [Rating] 10/10" – Michael Barrett, PopMatters

• Review: "The finale of the story Jaime has been telling over the past couple of annual issues [of Love and Rockets: New Stories] is a moment of bravura comics storytelling, but the buildup to it in the opening portions of this issue is pretty great as well... Ah, but as nice as these stories are, they all seem to be prelude to the dazzlingly virtuosic end of this chapter in the Locas saga... This could signal an end to the current era of Locas stories, but these characters are less figures of Jaime's imagination than real people alive in the minds of readers everywhere at this point, and even if another story featuring them never appears, we can rest assured that they will continue to live on, somewhere, sometime." – Matthew J. Brady, Warren Peace Sings the Blues

• Plug: On his blog, Frank Santoro declares "Ganges #4 is easily the best comic book of 2011. Case. Fucking. Closed."

• Review (Audio): Introducing the latest episode of the Wait, What? podcast, co-host Jeff Lester says "we dollop more praise on Ganges #4 by Kevin Huizenga because honestly that sucker could probably use another five or six dollops."

• Plugs: "Fantagraphics’ collections featuring Charles Schulz’s comic strip masterpiece, Peanuts, are fantastic and if you’re a Peanuts fan, you need to be reading these. Floyd Gottfredson probably did as much to shape the personality of Mickey Mouse and his supporting cast as Carl Barks did for the Disney Ducks, yet his work has never received the same degree of attention as the work of Barks. Fantagraphics is correcting that with Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse. The first two volumes of this series are fantastic and the strips probably look better here than they did when they were originally published. It’s a joy to watch Gottfredson develop as a storyteller as Mickey and the gang evolve along with him.... There’s also plenty of background material to place the stories into historical perspective. And the collection of Walt Kelly’s Pogo that hits stores this week is gorgeous. I have some of Fantagraphics’ previous Pogo volumes and this one blows them away. I’m also getting into Popeye for the first time with their collections of Segar’s classic strip." – Roger Ash, Westfield Comics Blog

• Interview: At The Vinyl District, Dulani Wallace talks to author Kevin Avery about Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson: "He would only really enjoy writing about things that meant something to him personally, so there are a few clues about his own life in many of his pieces. So that became the idea — the first half of the book is the biography, the second half of the book is Paul’s writing. It’s kind of like Paul telling his own story."

• Commentary: At Comic Book Resources, Laura Sneddon, who is documenting her experiences in the postgraduate Comic Studies program at the University of Dundee in Scotland, examines the work of Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb for the class topic "Comics and Gender"

The Beat presents 7 pages from Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, saying "This month’s release of the first volume of Fantagraphics’ Carl Barks reprints is call for rejoicing.... And these may be the seven of the greatest comics pages ever. Enjoy."

In this month's issue of Booklist you can find praise for three of our recent releases:

The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 by Charles M. Schulz: "These early 1980s episodes see Snoopy reunite with his brother Marbles (who’s baffled by his sibling’s WWI fantasies), Linus and Lucy plant a garden, and Peppermint Patty apply to a school for gifted children (she thinks they’re going to give her presents). But the strip’s fragile heart remains good ol’ Charlie Brown, who faces a crisis when liability issues bar him and his team from their baseball field. In a moving introduction to the volume, cartoonist Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse) writes about her close friendship with Schulz." – Gordon Flagg

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec Vol. 2 by Jacques Tardi: "The second collection of the Belle Époque exploits of Adèle Blanc-Sec sees the intrepid occult investigator confronting things walking the streets of Paris that shouldn’t be: a prehistoric ape-man revived by a mad scientist and a reanimated mummy from her own collection of artifacts. With their wryly overwrought captions, melodramatic dialogue, and convoluted plotlines, the stories work both as gentle genre parodies and full-out fantasy-detective thrillers, thanks in great part to Tardi’s lithe cartooning, which vividly evokes the period while sporting an entirely contemporary sensibility." – Gordon Flagg

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 2: Trapped on Treasure Island by Floyd Gottfredson: "For contemporary audiences who know Mickey Mouse only as the bland corporate mascot of the Disney empire, these 1932–33 newspaper comic strips featuring the famous rodent will be a revelation. As in his contemporaneous animated cartoons, this Mickey is a feisty, wisecracking daredevil, who searches tropical lands for buried treasure (encountering stereotyped cannibals that are offensive even by the era’s insensitive standards), treks to the frozen north to recover a stolen orphanage fund, and starts a detective agency with second banana Goofy. Gottfredson’s charmingly old-fashioned drawings accentuate the gags and briskly propel the plotlines." – Gordon Flagg

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...Kevin Avery’s Everything Is an Afterthought... chronicles the dramatic life of one of music’s keenest observers, Paul Nelson, and curates his finest critiques.... I read and adored [Nelson] growing up, but reading [him] in the context of today’s critical standards gave me the literary equivalent to the bends. It goes without saying that, in the age of the Internet, the whole idea of a critic has changed." – Jim Farber, New York Daily News

• Review: "It could well be ten years since I last read these stories [in Queen of the Black Black], and I’d either forgotten or never appreciated (my money’s on the latter) how astute and insightful they could be. Like a proto-Kevin Huizenga, [Megan Kelso] repeatedly turns up little rocks of human experience and chronicles what’s going on underneath, reintroducing us to feelings, sensations, and experiences we’d forgotten we’d had but recognize as if they happened this morning." – Sean T. Collins, The Comics Journal

• Review: "This collection of early stories from Megan Kelso shows a natural flair for the form, mixed with a self-critical determination to hone her craft, that’s helped her blossom into a master storyteller.... Anyone looking for a masterful example of the short story in comics would do well to give [Queen of the Black Black] a try. Beautifully written and well illustrated, this a wonderful portfolio of work from a creator showing a deep well of promise from the start." – Grovel

• Review: "...[E]asily... one of my favorite horror comics and one of my contenders for my Best of 2011 list.... Not only is the book carefully structured, it looks stunning.... The Hidden is a story that must be experienced to fully appreciate... There is an excellent story of slow-building despair to be found in its pages, with gorgeous depictions and coloring and a horror story that shocks, surprises, and entertains. Don't let this one get hidden on your shelves!  It may not be Halloween, but I still give this book my highest recommendation!" – Rob McMonigal, Panel Patter

• Review: "Volume 2 of Fantagraphics' Gottfredson Library, which takes us up through the beginning of 1934, maintains the high production standards and copious ancillaries of the first volume.... Tom Andrae's opening essay emphasizes, with good reason, how Gottfredson "spun off" many of his early narratives from the plots of animated cartoons. IMHO, however, the Mickey strip truly became "great" once Gottfredson gained the confidence to craft his own plots." – Chris Barat

• Profiles: The Associated Press's Russ Bynum chats with Jack Davis, Al Jaffee and Sergio Aragonés about the MAD cartoonists reunion this past weekend at Savannah College of Art & Design

• Profile: Paul Gravett surveys the work of David B. and presents a transcript of his bookstore discussion with the artist this past summer (hat tip to TCJ.com's Tim Hodler)

• Plug: Pulitzer-winning author and known Love and Rockets fan Junot Díaz names Poison River by Gilbert Hernandez (collected in Beyond Palomar) one of his top 10 favorite books in an excerpt from Unpacking My Library: Writers and their Books posted at The Financial Times

• Plug: From Michael May's monthly cruise through the current Previews catalog at Robot 6: "The Sincerest Form of Parody: The Best 1950s MAD-Inspired Satirical Comics — I can’t decide if I’m more interested in the historical context of what folks were parodying in the ’50s or just looking at some cool Jack Davis and Kirby art that I’ve never seen before."

• Plug: Oil and Water receives an excellent feature in the new issue of the Audubon Society of Portland Warbler newsletter, which can be downloaded here

• Tribute: At The Comics Journal, Bill Griffith remembers meeting, and later collaborating with, the late Bil Keane: "I was surprised when Bil told me he read Zippy in his local Arizona paper and liked it. He didn’t even qualify his opinion with the usual, “Of course, I don’t always get it.” Until then, I hadn’t paid much attention to The Family Circus, but I slowly began to see that you could read more into it than what appeared on the surface. This was before internet wise guys began mashing up random Friedrich Nietzsche lines for Billy and Jeffy’s and riffing on the strip as unconscious surrealism. But The Family Circus didn’t need hipsters to substitute incongruous dialogue to make the case that it was unconscious surrealism. It was unconscious surrealism on its own."