Polly & Her Pals, Vol. 1: 1925-1927

Thoughts I have had in regard to Polly & Her Pals, Vol. 1: 1925-1927, recently out from IDW. Feel free to murmur “that’s what she said” after every line.
“Holy shit, is that the new Polly & Her Pals? It’s enormous!”
“Suh-suh-seventy-five dollars!?”
“Carry the two…. Okay, I guess I technically don’t need to eat for the next two weeks.”
“No thanks, I don’t need a bag. And of course you don’t have one that would fit it anyway.”
“1913 to 1927? It can’t be comprehensive. It’s thick, but it’s not that thick.”
“Bit awkward to carry around.”
“Okay, let’s crack you open and feast on your innards.”
“Oh, I see. Only a representative sampling from 1913 to 1926.”
“Of course I’d like to see a truly complete collection, but I can’t imagine there’s much of a demand for that.”
“And based on these early strips it wouldn’t be very interesting for the first ten years anyway.”
“Who’s this Dean Mullaney fellow editing? The name’s familiar.”
“Pity they didn’t just reprint all of Art Spiegelman’s introduction from the first volume of Kitchen Sink’s old reprint series, instead of just quoting bits of it.”
“Seriously one of my favorite bits of comics criticism ever: if George Herriman is the raw blues, Sterrett is white jazz, Bix Beiderbecke with an eye on Satie.”
“Ooh, Jeet Heer introduction! That’ll do.”
“Mmmkay, good to know.”
“Wow, his early art was ugly. I mean, you can tell he could draw; he just mostly chose to scribble instead.”
“Good point about the language. It’s not as hard to decode as Herriman, but if you step back it’s still totally unlike anything any people have actually said.”
“Slang working on multiple levels. Kind of like his linework, when you think of it.”
“Okay, here come the comics. Mmmmmm.”
“Wow, the early stuff was all tribulations-of-courtship gags. Like a less poetic early F. Scott Fitzgerald.”
“How does he do that?”
“That shapeliness! But when you take it apart it’s all gesture and scribble, nothing as beautiful as it appears, the whole world fundamentally a cartoon.”
“Huh. You really can tell the difference when Sterrett took his vacations. It’s not bad, quite, just … not Sterrett.”
“Okay, now we’re clicking. Oh God yes.”
“Oh God yes.”
“Shape. Color. Language. Line. Sequence.”
“And some of it is even actually funny! Still! In 2010!”
“Oh here it comes.”
“YES! MY FAVORITE COMIC STRIP OF ALL TIME!”
“Wait. The colors are a little washed out.”
“Let’s look at this closely. The reproduction’s pretty good, especially on the linework, but it doesn’t pop like earlier versions of the material.”
“But at this size who’s complaining?”
“And there’s so much of it!”
“Oh God yes.”
“The way he draws trees on that one hunting strip is the best cartoon design ever done.”
“Seriously, I don’t know why people kept drawing after 1927, when Cliff Sterrett had obviously won drawing.”
“Oh there’s more! It looks like I won’t have to track down the pricey second volume of that Kitchen Sink reprint now.”
“Unless I want to compare reproduction, I mean.”
“Am I that anal?”
“Mmm, look at that.”
“So beautiful. So awesome. So funny.”
“Oh, we’re at the end already. Damn.”
“This is like a post-orgasmic glow, except for cartooning.”
“I have to write this up immediately.”

[several weeks pass]

“Come on, you have to be able to think of something to say about it.”
“Okay fine, we’ll do that.”

[hours later]

“Oh, Dean Mullaney was a founding editor of Eclipse Comics in the 1980s. Thanks, Wikipedia.”