About the Author

Crockett Johnson was the pen name of cartoonist and children's book illustrator David Johnson Leisk (October 20,1906-July 11, 1975). He is best known for the Harold series of books, which began with Harold and the Purple Crayon, and for the comic strip Barnaby. He was married to the children's book author Ruth Krauss, with whom he collaborated on several books, including The Carrot Seed. Daniel Clowes is a Harvey, Eisner, Ignatz, and PEN America Literary Award Winner whose comics and graphic novels have been translated into over 20 languages worldwide. He is also an Academy Award nominated screenwriter (for Ghost World), and retrospectives of his work have appeared at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Oakland Museum, and the Wexner Center in Columbus, OH. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and son. Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series (begun 1994) and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), Building Stories (2012) and Rusty Brown (2019). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style. Eric Reynolds is the VP/Associate Publisher of Fantagraphics Books. He has curated well over 4,000 pages of comics anthologies, between ten volumes of NOW, 22 volumes of Mome from 2005-2010, and several Free Comic Book Day anthologies for Fantagraphics. He lives in Seattle, WA.

Reviews

In 1942, Crockett Johnson caught the American public by storm with his brilliant comic strip Barnaby. A whole new generation now will have the opportunity to become acquainted with Johnson's influential creation, a real treasure for readers of all ages.-- "The Washington Times"

Strikingly minimal, in that pre-Peanuts era, was Crockett Johnson's Barnaby, whose characters appeared in profile and whose talk balloons were lettered not by hand but by mechanical typesetting. In my love of cartoons, I sent away to cartoonists, begging for a free original strip. My sample Barnaby strip slowly shed, over the years, its glued-on lettering.--John Updike