Walt and Skeezix, Book 2 (Walt & Skeezix) (Bk. 2)
In the second volume collecting King's entire runGasoline Alley, the focus shifts from the strip's original range of colorful characters to bachelor Walt Wallet and Skeezix, the foundling whose arrival on Walt's doorstep changed the strip from a comedy about the emerging automobile culture to the warmhearted, domestic "dramedy" that continues to this day. In the first indication of the more-or-less real-time progression that became the strip's hallmark, Skeezix becomes a toddler in these episodes. Although King's drawing style is gaining in mastery to handle the strip's growing seriousness, the major progress here is in the story, as King injects drama and suspense into long continuities devoted to the growing relationship between Walt and his neighbor Mrs. Blossom, the adoption hearing for Skeezix, the nationwide hunt in the wake of Skeezix's kidnapping by his mysterious birth mother, and a cross-country auto race between Walt and fellow car buff Avery--the first of the extended travel sequences that King undertook during his four-decade tenure and that allowed his visual brilliance to shine.Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved