The Complete Milt Gross Comic Books and Life Story
Toward the end of a long career spent writing cartoon-and-prose books, drawing a variety of newspaper strips, and in Hollywood, humorist Gross turned in the late 1940s to the relatively disreputable realm of comic books. He brought with him a number of his features from the funny pages, including That's My Pop, about a boastful layabout whose credulous son admires him nevertheless; Count Screwloose, about a resident of the Balmycrest Booby Hatch; and Banana Oil, in which frauds and braggarts are debunked with the titular rejoinder, which became a catchphrase. Gross augmented those with new creations, including ditsy Moronica and annoying canine Pete the Pooch. Such characters' outlandish behavior and breezy, loopy dialogue (which retains only a trace of the distinctive Yiddish-inflected patois characteristic of Gross' earlier work) were matched by the artist's wildly hyperbolic, screwball drawings. As if comics curator Yoe hadn't done enough service by unearthing these long-unseen stories, he prefaces them with a lengthy biographical essay illustrated with art from throughout Gross' career. --Gordon Flagg