As I’ve noted before, there was a rather powerful year in comics about the time that the Peanuts launched. Dennis the Menace and Beetle Bailey also launched within the course of a year… all strips that are still running in a large number of papers almost 60 years later.
And then there’s King Aroo. It may not have lasted as long, and it may not have become as famous… but among those in the know, it can hold its own in terms of quality. Stylistically, it’s most often compared to Pogo, perhaps more gentle. When the strip ended, creator Jack Kent went on to become a very respected name in children’s literature, including at least one book set in the King Aroo world.
Odds are good that you’ve never seen the strip – it’s been included in a few strip-fan magazines, in The Smithsonian Book of Newspaper Comics, but there’s only ever been one strip reprint published, and that was a single printing in 1953. But now, that’s ready to change – IDW (a publisher with an impressive line of classic strip collections) is putting out the first book of a series, this one including all the strips from 1950 through 1952.
King Aroo volume 1 is not a cheap book – lists for $40, but you can preorder now for a third off of it. Still, well worth it. Okay, when I say that, I have to raise one warning flag: I’ve got an interest in this. About Comics, my company, was actually going to publish this series – but when we saw that we could move it over to IDW, we did. They do great jobs with strip reprints, and we knew the material would be in good hands here. I’m still financially involved, beyond just the usual cut I get if you order through my links… but I had been looking forward to putting this book out because it’s good stuff. I’m financially involved because it’s good stuff.
(For those of you who order your comics through your local comics shop, it’s in the IDW section of the November Previews catalog, so you should be ordering it now.)
