Cartoon County: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe

by Cullen Murphy

Overview

A poignant history of the cartoonists and illustrators from the Connecticut School

For a period of about fifty years, right in the middle of the American Century, many of the the nation’s top comic-strip cartoonists, gag cartoonists, and magazine illustrators lived within a stone’s throw of one another in the southwestern corner of Connecticut—a bit of bohemia in the middle of those men in their gray flannel suits.

Cullen Murphy’s father, John Cullen Murphy, drew the wildly popular comic strips Prince Valiant and Big Ben Bolt, and was at the heart of this artistic milieu. Comic strips and gag cartoons read by hundreds of millions were created in this tight-knit group—Superman, Beetle Bailey, Snuffy Smith, Rip Kirby, Hagar the Horrible, Hi and Lois, Nancy, Sam & Silo, Amy, The Wizard of Id, The Heart of Juliet Jones, Family Circus, Joe Palooka, and The Lockhorns, among others. Cartoonists and their art were a pop-cultural force in a way that few today remember. Anarchic and deeply creative, the cartoonists were independent spirits whose artistic talents had mainly been forged during service in World War II.

Illustrated with never-before-seen photographs, cartoons, and drawings, Cartoon County brings the postwar American era alive, told through the relationship of a son to his father, an extraordinarily talented and generous man who had been trained by Norman Rockwell. Cartoon County gives us a glimpse into a very special community—and of an America that used to be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374298555
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	11/21/2017
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Cullen Murphy is the editor at large at Vanity Fair and the former managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of The Word According to Eve, Just Curious, and God’s Jury. He lives in Massachusetts with his family.

Editorial Reviews

…[a] warm and graceful memoir…Cullen joined his father in the studio…and it is from that unique vantage that this stylishly written and illustrated field guide to the American Cartoonist and his mid-century habitat is drawn…Cullen Murphy has had other notable successes as an editor, essayist and author, all presumably head-clearing pursuits that give him a valuable perspective lacking in those of us who rarely come up for air.

The New York Times Book Review - Garry Trudeau

09/15/2017
Murphy (The World According to Eve) recalls the heyday of comic strips in a tribute to his father, John Cullen Murphy, as well as other illustrators who lived in the Fairfield County, CT, area during the 1950s and 1960s. Trained by Norman Rockwell, John was among a group of artists who created strips like his own "Prince Valiant," Mort Walker's "Beetle Bailey," and Leonard Starr's "Little Orphan Annie." These comics, some enduring today, populated the pages of daily newspapers and magazines such as The New Yorker and the Saturday Evening Post. The author details how this group, known as the Connecticut School, flourished in suburbs outside of New York, selling their creations to large syndicates that distributed and licensed their work to publications around the country and throughout the world. VERDICT Amply illustrated with examples of work from John Murphy and other artists, this heartfelt look back at this still-beloved Sunday morning staple will be appreciated by readers nostalgic for the comic strips of their youth and for fans of contemporary graphic media. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]—Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

Library Journal

★ 2017-09-12
Part memoir, part cultural history, part treasure trove of drawings and photographs, many previously unpublished—and all thoroughly delightful as a celebration of the golden age of newspaper comics.Murphy (God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World, 2012, etc.) has distinguished himself as a journalist through his work at Vanity Fair and the Atlantic, but here he is very much his father's son—and collaborator. John Cullen Murphy drew the once-popular "Big Ben Bolt" strip and later took over the "Prince Valiant" strip, with his son helping on storylines for some three decades. Beyond that, the author "grew up in an unusual environment—not only as the child of a cartoonist and illustrator, but connected to a network of families where everyone's father was a cartoonist or illustrator." He estimates the group comprised more than 100 cartoonists, neighbors, and an extended social circle, all living near each other in Connecticut. Amid the suburban boom to which the artists contributed after returning from World War II—an experience that served as a common denominator and spawned "Beetle Bailey," "G.I. Joe," and more—Connecticut was the one state in that region that not only provided close access to the New York publishing world, but had no income tax. In the era before computers, artists working on tight deadlines relied on registered mail when they could and hopped aboard trains when the mail was too slow. Generally working in isolation, they "loved the camaraderie of the cartooning tribe, everyone slightly off register and anxious for company." There are stories of Murphy's father serving as the all-American-boy model for Norman Rockwell (who proved an inspiration and a patron), of the creators of "Superman," "Nancy," "Family Circus," and so many others, and of a feud with Al Capp, which resulted in a rival being dismissed by their guild's "hastily formed ethics committee" for "conduct unbecoming a cartoonist." The book is also an elegy for the era before comics went online or morphed into graphic novels, when a popular strip seemed to capture the entire nation's eyeballs.Fun to flip through; engrossing to read.

Kirkus Reviews

"Warm and graceful . . . [a] stylishly written and illustrated field guide to the American Cartoonist and his mid-century habitat." —Garry Trudeau, The New York Times Book Review

“A rich, clever, and affectionate account of a tight-knit circle of cartoonists . . . The art in Cartoon County is as lovingly reproduced as the anecdotes.” —Dan Wasserman, The Boston Globe

“A lovingly observed tribute to that magical mid-twentieth-century never-never land (suburban Connecticut), where cartoonists of newspaper strips and magazine gag panels commuted to the top floor or the basement of their homes, or to nearby studios, to turn out a form of art that was, in its day, an integral part of American culture, rivaling today’s TV, cable, or the web. John Cullen Murphy was the illustrator of the classic Prince Valiant Sunday page, and his life, and that of his cartoonist friends, is recorded in anthropological detail in this beautifully composed and delightfully illustrated love letter from his son.” —Jules Feiffer, cartoonist and illustrator, author of the noir graphic novel trilogy Kill My Mother

“Imagine growing up in a bucolic Eden populated by dozens of oddball cartoonists and you’ll have some idea of what Cullen Murphy’s youth was like. In Cartoon County, Murphy—son of the admired Prince Valiant illustrator—gives us a glimpse into the curious lives of these masters of pen and ink, and an unforgettable portrait of his father: independent, quirky, funny, and wise. A gem.” —Edward Sorel, cartoonist and illustrator, author of Mary Astor's Purple Diary and Unauthorized Portraits

“A lavishly illustrated memoir of the boom years of the American comic strip from Peanuts to Prince Valiant, as told by an insider.” —Tom Wolfe, author of The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff

“What a find this book is for anyone who grew up, like me, devouring the funnies, cartoons, and comic books. Where did all these delightful things come from? A lot of it was from one neighborhood in Connecticut. With wit, deep affection, and playful erudition, Cullen Murphy has sketched and inked the backstory of this unique literary and artistic subculture, and wrapped into it a colorful, loving memoir of his parents and their very large family.” —Mark Bowden, author of Hué 1968 and Black Hawk Down

“An enchanting and irresistible memoir by the son of one of the great illustrators of the Connecticut School of artists. Cullen Murphy’s Cartoon County takes us back in time on a sentimental journey to his childhood and a lost world full of innocent splendor and delight, and makes our hearts glow.” —Christopher Buckley, author of The Relic Master and Losing Mum and Pup

“Cullen Murphy and I grew up in Connecticut during a golden age of cartooning and share many memories of those spirited times. The colorful characters from this vanished era come back to life in this heartfelt family history, which is also an outstanding work of comic scholarship.” —Brian Walker, son of Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey), cartoonist, author of The Comics: The Complete Collection

“Part memoir, part cultural history, part treasure trove of drawings and photographs . . . and all thoroughly delightful as a celebration of the golden age of newspaper comics.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[Cullen Murphy’s] memoir provides sharp but loving observations of the tight-knit clan that shared a strong commitment to family, a love of golf, and ‘that early-’50s Clark Kent-ish look’ . . . Nearly all the Connecticut School members are gone now, and newspaper comics, like newspapers themselves, are on the wane. Murphy’s paean to this bygone era and endangered art form make the reader keenly feel what’s been lost.” —Gordon Flagg, Booklist

“Immensely evocative . . . [Murphy] writes with a personable mix of affection and realism that offers a vivid sense of what it was like to . . . be a working cartoonist in the decades following WWII.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher