Warm and funny book. Cullen Murphy, who is a good writer, tells us of the cluster of Connecticut cartoonists who illustrated newspapers and magazines in mid-twentieth century USA. ( )

All in all, this is a charming remembrance of the time when the comic strips were in their predominance, and when the state of Connecticut was basically one big colony for many of the practitioners. If you ever cared about the newspaper comics, or pre-digital media, you'll enjoy this book. ( )

Cartoon County is a memoir/biography/history by Cullen Murphy of the comic strip cartoonists and illustrators who lived and worked in Fairfield County, Connecticut in the post-World War II era. The book focuses on his father, John Cullen Murphy, who illustrated the comic strip Big Ben Bolt and took over Prince Valiant from its creator Hal Foster in the 1970s.

I feel destined to read this book, primarily because I grew up loving newspaper comics and fascinated by their history (although these days I exclusively read the comics' mockery blog, Comics Curmudgeon). I also grew up in Fairfield County myself, and as a kid was proud that Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker lived there, and my father took us to the Museum of Cartoon Art in a castle-like house in nearby Port Chester, NY. The author of this book was even of the most famous alumni of my high school - along with Broadway actor David Carroll, baseball player Tim Teufel, and publicist Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy - and a customized panel of Prince Valiant graced our school's trophy case.

Murphy writes about growing up in a community of comics illustrators of the "Connecticut School" where his father and the other fathers he knew did not join the crowds of men in gray flannel suit taking the commuter rail to New York City. Many of these men (and for the most part, the comics was a man's trade) came of age during World War II where they used their artistic talents in their military service. After the war, Connecticut was an affordable place where they could get homes with studio space near the publishing houses of New York (it's alarming to think that Fairfield County was ever affordable!). These cartoonists include Mort Walker, Jerry Dumas, Stan Drake, Dik Browne, Ernie Bushmiller, Milton Caniff, and Crockett Johnson, among many others. The School included daily comic strip cartoonists, New Yorker cartoonists, editorial cartoonists, and magazine illustrators.

The book covers a lot of territory. First, it's a personal memoir of Murphy's father, who had the practice of using a Polaroid camera to photograph himself (and any family members or friends in the vicinity) in various poses to use as models for his illustrations. Starting in the 1970s, Murphy would work with his father as the writer of Prince Valiant.

Second, it's a broader history of the Connecticut School cartoonists who were his father's friends and colleagues. Murphy details their experiences in WWII, settling in Connecticut after the war, and the interplay between their comics. Events like Look Day at the New Yorker (the one day each week when cartoonists gathered in New York to show their gags to the magazine's editors) and National Cartoonists Society brought together cartoonists for business with a heavy side of socialization. The men came together for parties and games of golf (which seems to be the origin of the all-too-many golf gags in newspaper comics) as well.

Finally, the book is a tribute to newspaper comics as a unique American art form of the 20th century. Murphy has some interesting observations on the cartoonists. While his father was a strong Republican, most of the cartoonists were politically liberal and lived lives of noncomformity for their time. Sentaro Este Kefauver conducted a congressional investigation of the comics industry in which Pogo creator Walt Kelly declared that being a "screwball" was a badge of honor for cartoonists. The comics were innovative for time, and I learned about a short-lived strip of the 1960s called Sam's Strip (predecessor to Sam & Silo), which Jerry Dumas created as post-modern, metatextual experiment that left comics readers scratching their heads. And yet newspaper comics on the whole tended to be conservative, and as the generation of cartoonists died (many passing on the legacy strips to their children and grandchildren) and newspapers themselves went into decline, comics failed to adapt to the new reality. Murphy mourns the past but still sees hope in the underappreciated work of graphic novels.

This books is richly illustrated with comics panels, original works of art, and photographs. It's a great way to dip one's toe into a time and place when kids gleefully anticipated the Sunday papers wrapped in the full-color comics section. It tells the story of the men who brought this joy and some of the behind the scenes secrets of their craft. ( )