See You in the Funny Papers
A great review of “Masters of American Comics” which runs through Jan. 28 at the Newark Museum in NJ and the Jewish Museum in NYC:
“The show tracks a century of formal comics invention (in Newark, mostly early strips; at the Jewish Museum, different comic book incarnations) through what are meant to be mini-retrospectives. This means Elzie Crisler Segar’s “Thimble Theater,” which introduced Popeye (he was far, far darker than the spinach-addled television cartoon), and Milton Caniff’s superstylish “Terry and the Pirates.” It means Frank King’s languid “Gasoline Alley” and Chester Gould’s “Dick Tracy,” which set the standard for hard-boiled grit and packed a visceral punch that came from tightly organized colors and shapes (Mr. Spiegelman calls it “blueprint Expressionism”) until Mr. Gould went kind of gaga and launched Tracy into outer space to fight bad guys on the moon in a rocket-powered garbage can.”
