W. S. Gilbert, renowned author of the Savoy Operas, was also the creator of the Bab Ballads--"possibly the best comic verse--and surely the best illustrated--in the English language," according to James Ellis. Gilbert published these poems, together with his own, grotesque drawings signed "Bab," a childhood nickname, in Fun and other magazines in the late nineteenth century.
In 1898, the older and by then distinguished Gilbert substituted pallid and inoffensive drawings for the originals, which he had come to believe "erred gravely in the direction of unnecessary extravagance." Since then the ballads have been collected and published in various editions, most of which have featured the revised drawings and only a selection of the poems.
This is the only book to offer the complete collection of ballads with all original illustrations, a tribute to the comic genius of a writer known as "the most original dramatist of his generation." This collection will delight readers with its irreverence and wit.
Subversive, funny, and effortlessly droll, Jules Feiffer’s cartoons were all over New York in the 1960s and ’70s—featured in the Village Voice, but also cut out and pinned to bulletin boards in offices and on refrigerators at home. Feiffer describes himself as “lucking into the zeitgeist,” and there’s some truth to the sentiment; Feiffer’s brand of satire reflected Americans’ ambivalence about the Vietnam War, changing social mores, and much more.
Feiffer’s memoir, Backing into Forward, like his cartoons, is sharply perceptive with a distinctive bite of mordant humor. Beginning with his childhood in Brooklyn, Feiffer paints a picture of a troubled kid with an overbearing mother and a host of crippling anxieties. From there, he discusses his apprenticeship with his hero, Will Eisner, and his time serving in the military during the Korean War, which saw him both feigning a breakdown and penning a cartoon narrative called “Munro” that solidified his distinctive aesthetic as an artist. While Feiffer’s voice grounds the book, the sheer scope of his artistic accomplishment, from his cartoons turning up in the New Yorker, Playboy, and the Nation to his plays and film scripts, is remarkable and keeps the narrative bouncing along at a speedy clip. A compelling combination of a natural sense of humor and a ruthless dedication to authenticity, Backing into Forward is full of wit and verve, often moving but never sentimental.
“Jules Feiffer’s original and neurotic voice. . . . reinvented comics in the 1950s and made possible what’s now called the ‘graphic novel.’ His engaging new memoir is told in that same witty and perceptive New York cadence, mellowed and laced with wisdom. He’s an inspiration.”—Art Spiegelman
Set in the days of small, local banks when embarrassing entrepreneurs were the one family in town who bought a new car every year—those cars everyone else called ‘gunboats—and the bad guys came with black hats, this rollicking send-up of stupid criminals who even Barnie Fife could have outwitted makes for belly-laughs while reading and memories that will bring smiles to readers’ faces.
The Sex Pistols. David Bowie. Pink Floyd. Rebel rockers and provokers of the public, vivid in our memories as much for their subversion of the mainstream as for their signature sounds. Yet what very few people realize is that a substantive part of the weaponry used by these rockers and their contemporaries was humor: outrageous onstage antics, coded cultural references, and clever lyrical constructs were all critical to expressions of youth rebellion that could still slip past the powers that be.
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