Complete Little Orphan Annie Volume 1

I really enjoyed this book. I would read this to kids who can't read yet and who have trouble visualizing what you are reading to them. If the kids can look on as you are reading to them, it helps a lot.The stories are very engaging. I found myself not being able to resist turning the page to see what happened next.Little Orphan Annie is a great character, as is Daddy Warbucks! Both characters have that very American can-do never-give-up-despite-the-odds feel to them. It is that characteristic that really sets Americans apart from Europeans or any other culture. And it was ingrained in the American character during the earliest years of the Republic.I would heartily recommend this book as well as all the rest in the series. You can easily see why this comic strip lasted for 44 years.

I had never read this cartoon before, as it was not in any of the papers we got growing up. I was surprised at how much of a roughneck Annie is, nothing like the general idea I got of her from the advertising for the movie and musical, which I had also never seen. Probably politically incorrect by today's standards, including an extremely rich "good guy," Daddy Warbucks, unacceptable to many today. Likewise, her anti-sissy comments would be unacceptable if said in a current comic. If the historical context is kept in mind, this is a very entertaining comic. I just could not take going through 40 or more years worth of her having such a bad time much of the time, so I am stopping with Volume One. There is just not much excuse for a relatively nice orphan having so much trouble in her life.

Newspaper comic strips are truly a time capsule of the world in which they reside. This collection, starting in 1924, is a good example of that. All the slang, styles, and current events of the day are on display in this one. Part adventure, part soap opera, part editorial cartoon, Little Orphan Annie was written and drawn by its creator, Harold Gray, for 44 years. This book contains the first 3 years of the strip.The main draw of the first volume of Little Orphan Annie is that it contains the story of how the title character met the iconic "Daddy Warbucks." It also sets the stage for the status quo that the strip had for its entire run (Annie and Daddy are separated and reunited constantly through the decades).For the art fans out there, you can see that Harold Gray's signature style had not yet taken off, but it gets closer to the characters' "classic" looks by the end of this volume, as it continues through into 1927. In terms of truly memorable stories, the later volumes are better, but this first volume is a must have for fans of the series or the comics medium as a whole.

The book was in terrific shape and arrived sooner than expected.

I have been a great fan of comic strips since the '50s, and I much appreciate the work being done to preserve and present the old strips. This was something of a flyer since I rarely have actually had access to this strip. I loved this book. The artwork is fantastic and the stories roll along. I'm looking forward to getting more volumes, and I expect to occasionally reread this one. This is in contrast to some others. I have the first volume of Dick Tracy, and although I read this strip all through pre-adulthood, I see no reason to get another. I have 3 or 4 of Gasoline Alley, and I finally had to admit that these early story lines are boring, and drag on and on. I don't expect to ever reread them, and at the rate of publication it will be decades before the Gasoline Alley I remember fondly will be seeing print. So I recommend everyone buy the Annie volumes so that they keep coming, and hopefully the few exorbitantly priced volumes will be reprinted so we working folk can afford to get them.

I got this for my kids. They have fought over it. The spine fell apart. I asked them to take better care of Volume 2 when I got that for them a couple months later. No fighting that I know of, yet, but the spine of that book has fallen apart, also. They are now up to Volume Three and I'm still evaluating it. If the third volume also falls apart, I'll say that there is a problem with the quality of the bindings of these books.I have instructed my kids on how to properly break-in a new book but I didn't do that for them on these first three books. I will personally perform the breaking-in on Volume Four when we get it and see how it goes from there.I really like the layout and bonus content, and the built-in ribbon bookmark is an awesome touch. I'm such a fan of Harold Gray and the values he expressed through this comic strip. We will glue and duct tape to hold these books together if we must, but it's unfortunate to see books which could be passed down to future generations as family heirlooms marred by poor production quality.

The first three years of Little Orphan Annie daily strips, with the handful of continuity Sunday strips. The bulk of the Sunday strips will come later. Here we have the beginings, and while Annie isn't as sharp as she would be in the future (in these early strips, she sometimes seems like a slightly vulnerable, slightly naive kid), there is quite a lot of what one would expect. One gets dramatic stories, sharp characterization and lessons about life the way it really is. Real life lessons from a comic strip? Yes. This is the begining of a ride that would last until 1968, when Harold Gray passed away. Of course there is no real Annie without Gray at the helm. I'm sorry that I never read this when I was growing up. It is a pleasure to see someone pick up where Fantagraphics dropped it. Now if the series keeps going to the end, we will be all set. No one saw the world in all its varied aspects better than Gray.

bOTH VOLUMES ARE BEAUTIFULLY PRESENTED. A LITTLE EXPENSIVE.ESPECIALLY VOLUME TWO FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON.

IDW through their imprint LoAC have really knocked it out the park with these beautifully crafted books, from the binding to the hand sewn book ribbons to the amazing reproduction of artwork almost 100 years old, these books are nothing short of a work of art in of themselves. They look fantastic lined up on a shelf and also the lack of numbering on the spine means one can collect the books out of order and not see ugly missing numbers. I don’t know, a small touch but a great one.