This is a brand-new copy of the just-released new book on Milt Gross by Paul C. Tumey. Signed copy available for free upon request. Free shipping! 

Published and sold directly by Erratic Press, the original publisher. (Is diss a system?)

Step back into the roaring 1920s and rediscover one of American comics’ lost geniuses. The Art of Milt Gross Volume One: Mastering Cartoon Pantomime -- Judge 1923-24, the first in an ongoing series, presents a trove of rare and restored comics lost for over a century: The complete Milt Gross comics that appeared in Judge magazine in 1923 and 1924, plus a slew of "extras" for a 200-page bundle of hilarious fun and a deep dive into the life and work of one of America's greatest cartoonists and humorists.

In 1923, when he was working hard to re-establish himself in the newspaper cartooning industry with a full-time job at The New York World, Gross also broke into the slick, weekly humor magazine market and provided Judge with dozens of superb, dense, funny pages of comics. Not only that, but Gross also challenged himself to master a very difficult form: the pantomime comic. As Tumey argues in the accompanying essay, "Gradually, Milt Gross," his Judge work played a key role in his artistic development that led to his breakthrough success just a few years later.

Before Nize Baby, before Count Screwloose, Milt Gross was quietly revolutionizing humor on the printed page. In fact, as this book shows, he first developed some of his funniest comics in his Judge work and later remade them for his newspaper strips and even some of the best parts of his 1930 graphic novel, He Done Her Wrong.

These early comics reveal the birth of his unmistakable style: big-hearted, kinetic, and wildly inventive while also being intriguingly tighter and less wild than his mature work.

For the first time, this volume gathers his complete Judge magazine work from 1923–24, with annotations and a deep dive illustrated essay by comics historian Paul C. Tumey (Screwball! The Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny).

With a foreword by Drew Lerman (Snake Creek), and a specially colored Milt Gross strip by Noah Van Sciver, this book is both a feast for fans and a vital addition to comics history. Includes an extensive 60+-page Supplements section that provides additional essays, excerpts, scholarly material, and a continuity of rare strips from Hitz and Mrs., the hilarious and long-forgotten newspaper comic strip Gross wrote and drew at the same time in 1923.