In the United States at midcentury - a time of few opportunities for women in general and even fewer for African American woman Jackie Ormes (1911-85) blazed the trail as a popular cartoonist with the major black newspapers of the day. Ormes's work provides an invaluable glimpse into American culture and history, with topics that include racial segregation, U. S. foreign policy, educational equality, the atom bomb, and environmental pollution among...

Raina wakes up one night with a terrible upset stomach. Her mom has one, too, so it's probably just a bug. Raina eventually returns to school, where she's dealing with the usual highs and lows: friends, not-friends, and classmates who think the school year is just one long gross-out session. It soon becomes clear that Raina's tummy trouble isn't going away... and it coincides with her worries about food, school, and changing friendships. What's going...

A diverse collection of tributes to the controversial artist and underground comic pioneer R. Crumb. Follow his trajectory from homemade comic books and greeting-card design through the comic renaissance during the San Francisco psychedelic revolution to his expatriate life in France and his renewed renown today.

Al Jaffee's work has enlivened the pages of MAD magazine since 1955 and made him a cultural icon, but the story of his life has yet to be told. Six-year-old Jaffee was separated from his father, uprooted from his home in Savannah, Georgia, and transplanted by his mother to a shtetl in Lithuania, a world of kerosene lamps, outhouses, physical abuse, and near starvation. He was rescued by his father, returned to America, taken back yet again by his...

A major portrait of the legendary comics figure and creator of Li'l Abner offers insight into his deeply complicated character, providing coverage of such topics as the childhood accident that cost him his leg, his turbulent apprenticeship with Joe Palooka creator Ham Fisher and his extremely conservative political views.