The Art of Milt Gross Vol. One: Mastering Cartoon Pantomime-Judge 1923-24

by Milt Gross (Author), Paul C. Tumey (Editor), Drew Lerman (Foreword), Noah Van Sciver (Contributor)

Step back into the roaring 1920s and rediscover one of American comics’ lost geniuses. The Art of Milt Gross Volume One, the first in an ongoing series, presents a trove of rare and restored comics lost for over a century.

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 the hilarious, forgotten newspaper comic strip Gross wrote and drew at the same time in 1923.

Whether you're a comics scholar, vintage art lover, or just someone who enjoys a good laugh—this is the Gross you didn’t know you were missing.