Skippy debuted as a daily newspaper strip in 1925, and as a Sunday the
following year, soon becoming a sensation, published in 28 countries and
14 languages. Crosby continued writing and drawing the feature until
1945. Today we see Skippy as the spiritual ancestor to Peanuts and
Calvin and Hobbes, among many other kid strips. Percy Crosby
influenced cartoonists from Charles Schulz to Walt Kelly to Garry
Trudeau.
"Percy Crosby caught lightning in a bottle and learned how to draw with
it," wrote Jules Feiffer in a 1978 appreciation. Milton Caniff marveled,
"Boy, there's nothing faster than watching Skippy run the way Crosby
drew him." Crosby was heralded as "the greatest apostle of motion in the
field of art" by Edward Alden Jewell, art critic of the New York Times.
His artwork has hung in the Louvre in Paris, the Corcoran Gallery in
Washington, and the Tate Gallery in London, among other venues, but it's
his work as a cartoonist, as the creator of Skippy--the philosopher
man-child--for which he's best known.
Volume 1 includes every Skippy daily strip from the beginning--June
22, 1925 through the end of 1927--as well as the start of an extensive,
ongoing biography of Percy Crosby by Jared Gardner, complemented by many
photographs and rare artwork from the collection of the cartoonist's
daughter, Joan Crosby Tibbetts.
An Eisner Award-nominee!
