Seuss was drawing biting cartoons for adults that expressed his fierce opposition to anti-Semitism and fascism. An editorial cartoonist from 1941 to 1943 for PM magazine, a left-wing daily New York newspaper, Dr. Seuss launched a battle against dictatorial rule abroad and America First (an isolationist organization that argued against U.S. entry into World War II) with more than 400 cartoons urging the United States to fight against Adolf Hitler and his cohorts in fascism, Benito Mussolini, Pierre Laval, and Japan (he never depicted General Tojo Hideki, the wartime prime minister, or Togo Shigenori, the foreign minister). Dr. Seuss Goes to War, by Richard H. Minear, includes 200 of these cartoons, demonstrating the active role Dr. Seuss played in shaping and reflecting how America responded to World War II as events unfolded.As one of America's leading historians of Japan during World War II, Minear also offers insightful commentary on the historical and political significance of this immense body of work that, until now, has not been seriously considered as part of Dr. Seuss's extraordinary legacy.Born to a German-American family in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1904, Theodor Geisel began his cartooning career at Dartmouth College, where he contributed to the humor magazine. After a run-in with college authorities for bootlegging liquor, he had to use a pseudonym to get his work published, choosing his middle name, Seuss, and adding "Dr." several years later when he dropped out of graduate school at Oxford University in England. He had never planned on setting poison political pen to paper until he realized his deep hatred of Italian fascism. The first editorial cartoon he drew depicts the editor of the fascist paper Il Giornale d'Italia wearing a fez (part of Italy's fascist uniform) and banging away at a giant steam typewriter while a winged Mussolini holds up the free end of the banner of paper emerging from the roll. He submitted it to a friend at PM, an outspoken political magazine that was "against people who push other people around," and began his two-year career with the magazine before joining the U.S. Army as a documentary filmmaker in 1943.Dr. Seuss's first caricature of Hitler appears in the May 1941 cartoon, "The head eats, the rest gets milked," portraying the dictator as the proprietor of "Consolidated World Dairy," merging 11 conquered nations into one cow. Hitler went on to become one of the main caricatures in Seuss's work for the next two years, depicted alone, among his generals and other Germans, and with his allies Benito Mussolini and Pierre Laval. He is also drawn alongside "Japan," which Dr. Seuss portrays quite offensively, with slanted, bespectacled eyes and a sneering grin. While Dr. Seuss was outspoken against antiblack racism in the United States, he held a virulent disdain for the Japanese and rendered sinister and, at times, slanderous caricatures of their wartime actions even before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But Dr. Seuss's aggression wasn't solely reserved for the fascists abroad. He was also loudly critical of America's initial apathy toward the war, skewering isolationists like America First advocate Charles Lindbergh, the Chicago Tribune's Colonel Robert McCormick, Eleanor Medill Patterson of the Washington Times-Herald, and Joseph Patterson of the New York Daily News, whom he considered as evil as Hitler. He encouraged Americans to buy war savings bonds and stamps and to do everything they could to ensure victory over fascism.Minear provides historical background in Dr. Seuss Goes to War that not only serves to contextualize these cartoons but also deftly explains the highly problematic anti-Japanese and anticommunist stances held by both Dr. Seuss and PM magazine, which contradicted the leftist sentiments to which they both eagerly adhered. As Minear notes, Dr. Seuss eventually softened his feelings toward communism as Russia and the United States were united on the Allied front, but his stereotypical portrayals of Japanese and Japanese-Americans grew increasingly and undeniably racist as the war raged on, reflecting the troubling public opinion of American citizens. Minear does not attempt to ignore or redeem Dr. Seuss's hypocrisy; rather, he shows how these cartoons evoke the mood and the issues of the era. After Dr. Seuss left PM magazine, he never drew another editorial cartoon, though we find in these cartoons the genesis of his later characters Yertle the dictating turtle and the Cat in the Hat, who bears a striking resemblance to Uncle Sam. Dr. Seuss Goes to War is an astonishing collection of work that many of his devoted fans have not been able to see until now. But this book is also a comprehensive, thoughtfully researched, and exciting history lesson of the Second World War, by a writer who loves Dr. Seuss as much as those who grow up with his books do.

    For many years, Ernie Bushmiller 's Nancy, with its odd-looking, squat heroine, nearly abstract art, and often super-corny gags, was perceived as the stodgiest, squarest comic strip in the world. Popular with newspaper readers, true but definitely not a strip embraced by comic-strip connoisseurs, like Krazy Kat, Dick Tracy or Terry and the Pirates. But then those connoisseurs took a closer look, and began to realize that Bushmiller 's art approached its own kind of cartoon perfection, and those corny gags often achieved a striking zen quality. In its own way, it turned out Nancy was in fact the most iconic comic strip of all. (The American Heritage Dictionary actually uses a Nancy strip to illustrate its entry on comic strip. ) Charter members of the Nancy revival include Art Spiegelman, who published Mark Newgarden 's famous Love 's Savage Fury (featuring Nancy and Bazooka Joe) in an early issue of RAW; Fletcher Hanks anthologist Paul Karasik; Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith; underground publisher Denis Kitchen, who released several volumes of Nancy collections in the 1980s; Understanding Comics Scott McCloud, who created the Five-Card Nancy card game; Joe Brainard, who produced an entire Nancy book of paintings in 2008; and Andy Warhol, who produced a painting based on Nancy. Beginning in the Winter of 2011, fans will be dancing with joy as Fantagraphics unveils an ongoing Nancy reprint project. Each volume contain a whopping full four years of daily Nancy strips (a Sunday Nancy project looms in the future), collected in a fat, square (what else, for the squarest strip in the world?) package designed by Jacob (Popeye, Beasts , Willie and Joe) Covey. This first volume will collect every daily strip from 1943 to 1946. (Fantagraphics will eventually release Nancy 's first five years, 1938-1942, but given the scarcity of archival material for these years we are giving ourselves some extra time to collate it all.) This first Nancy volume will feature an introduction by another stellar Bushmiller fan, Daniel Clowes (from whose collection most of the strips in this volume were scanned), a biography of the artist, and much more.

    --ART SPIEGELMAN, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF MAUS ON DR. SEUSS GOES TO WAR Hailed by Entertainment Weekly as "a provocative history of wartime politics," Dr. Seuss Goes to War, published nearly a decade ago, sold over one hundred thousand copies and introduced readers to the World War II-era political cartoons of Theodore Seuss Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss. Published to great acclaim, the collection included over two hundred cartoons from Geisel's years working for the New York daily newspaper PM. Now Dr. Seuss & Co. Go to War presents a new trove of close to four hundred discoveries from the PM World War II archives, including over one hundred cartoons by Seuss, fifty cartoons by the New Yorker's Saul Steinberg, and works by the leading cartoonists of the time, such as Al Hirschfeld, caricaturist for the New York Times; Polish-born American artist Arthur Szyk; and future New Yorker cartoonists Carl Rose and Mischa Richter. The cartoons and commentary in this handsome volume (to be published in the same format as the original Dr. Seuss Goes to War) cover the five years of the war, illustrating changing attitudes and providing a complex picture of the issues that concerned Americans.

    The notoriety landed Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder in publications ranging from Time magazine to People magazine which named him one of the "25 Most Intriguing People of '99." Centered around the experiences of two young African-American boys, Huey and Riley, who move from inner-city Chicago to the suburbs (or the "boondocks" to them), the strip fuses hip-hop sensibilities with Japanese anime-style drawings and a candid discussion of race. In this first collection of Boondocks cartoons, you'll discover the funny yet revealing combination of superb art and envelope-pushing content in one of the most unique strips ever.

    'Illiad' Frazer. " Some say it's a cartoon about Open Source; some say it's about the rift between technical and nontechnical staff; others say its about the pain that technical people suffer when dealing with the stubbornly unintelligent; some even say that User Friendly is a cartoon about Internet Workers. User Friendly addresses all those issues, but I don't think that's what it's about, strictly speaking. User Friendly's universe revolves around the simple idea that technology brings out both the best and the worst in people, no matter who they are."User Friendly reads like Dilbert for the Open Source community. With a massive online following, it provides outsiders a light-hearted look at the world of the hard core geek, and allows those who make their living dwelling in this world a chance to laugh at themselves.

    While his courtiers were jealous of Birbal, the emperor was quick to notice his agile mind. While the two men loathed hypocrisy and deceit; they also relished a good joke.