A while back, I posted a message about an obscure comic strip called “Small World” (and seem to have confused a few of you, because I thought I’d posted about it earlier but hadn’t.) I was wrestling with the question of whether this odd strip was influenced by Peanuts. I still wrestle with that. On one hand, it’s a strip of kids displaying adult sensibilities, much as one would describe Peanuts. On the other hand, it came out just a couple years into Peanuts run, before Peanuts would become the juggernaut that it did, and before its dynamics could be considered quite as defined (and thus copyable) as they would become. Not that this is in any way a Peanuts clone, mind you. Basically, it’s either a strip about some kids playing house or it’s a strip about adults that are just drawn as children; it can be interpreted in either way.

But there’s few people I can discuss this with. The strip is, as I said, obscure. Not sure exactly how long it ran… started ’52, and it seems to have disappeared mid-’50s. The cartoonist, who goes by “Sam Brier” here, had a couple other short-lived features on the comics page, under the name “S.B. Stevens”, but they too are obscure. There was one collection of “Small World” issued in ’54, but you’d probably never see it (Bookfinder shows about a dozen copies in used book world.)

So what could I do? I republished it!

As of today, you can order your own copy of the small world collection. I’ve reformatted it; the original edition used a standard size that didn’t fit the art, I’ve trimmed it down to a nice square format.

128 pages, 124 strips. $7.99. Orderable now (and it’s part of Amazon’s usual deal on under-$10 books… buy four, and the cheapest one si free.)

I don’t expect to sell a lot of these — seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t sell any. But what the heck, publishing comics is what I do.

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