Willard Mullin's Golden Age Of Baseball Drawings 1934-1972

This first-ever retrospective of the dean of American sports cartooning stars baseball greats such as Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Lou Gehrig, and many others.

In Fantagraphics ceaseless effort to rediscover every world-class cartoonist in the history of the medium, we turn your attention to a neglected part of the art formsports cartooningand to its greatest practitionerWillard Mullin. The years 1930-1970 were the Golden Age of both American sports and American comic strips, when giants strode their respective fieldsBabe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Hank Aaron in one, George (Krazy Kat) Herriman, Milton (Steve Canyon) Caniff, Walt (Pogo) Kelly in the otherand Mullin was there, straddling both fields, recording every major player and event in the mid-20th-century history of baseball. Mullin was to baseball players what Bill Mauldin was to soldiers: advocate and critic, investing them with personality, humanity, dignity, and poignancy; Mauldin had Willie & Joe and Mullin had the Brooklyn Bum, his affectionate 1939 character representing the bedraggled figure of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Willard Mullins Golden Age of Baseball: Drawings 1934-1972 collects for the first time Mullins best drawings devoted to baseballdepictions of players like Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, and Sandy Koufax, legendary managers like Casey Stengel and George Steinbrenner, and events like Lou Gehrigs emotional retirement speech on July 4, 1939, for which Mullin not only drew a portrait but composed a poem (which he often incorporated into his cartoons). Mullins fluid line and delicate but vigorous brushwork are shown to beautiful effect, with many drawings reproduced from original art. See why millions of baseball fans from the 30s to the 70s looked forward to Mullins cartoons in their daily paper. Mullins was voted Sports Cartoonist of the Century upon his retirement by his peers, and his legacy has been summed up by New Yorker cartoonist Bob Staake, who wrote, Mullin defined the modern sports cartoon by combining representative portraiture, cartoonish doodlery, and editorial commentarypart news account, part personal observation, his cartoons celebrated sport for its entertainment, cultural, and artistic value. Black & white illustrations throughout with some color