---
product_id: 19384847
title: "Society is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy of the Dawn of the American Comic Strip 1895-1915 Hardcover – October 24, 2013"
brand: "peter maresca"
price: "₩6916811"
currency: KRW
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 9
url: https://www.desertcart.kr/products/19384847-society-is-nix-gleeful-anarchy-of-the-dawn-of-american
store_origin: KR
region: South Korea
---

# Society is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy of the Dawn of the American Comic Strip 1895-1915 Hardcover – October 24, 2013

**Brand:** peter maresca
**Price:** ₩6916811
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Society is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy of the Dawn of the American Comic Strip 1895-1915 Hardcover – October 24, 2013 by peter maresca
- **How much does it cost?** ₩6916811 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.kr](https://www.desertcart.kr/products/19384847-society-is-nix-gleeful-anarchy-of-the-dawn-of-american)

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- peter maresca enthusiasts

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## Description

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## Images

![Society is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy of the Dawn of the American Comic Strip 1895-1915 Hardcover – October 24, 2013 - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61Qh04np9kL.jpg)
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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    An Explosive Dawn
  

*by B***N on Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2013*

Sunday Press has brought us huge tomes filled with the wondrous worlds of Winsor McCay, the visual poetry of Frank King, and the all-round incomparable "Krazy Kat" by Herriman. "Society is Nix," on the other hand, abandons all pretense and caution and hurls us straight into the multicolored mayhem that was the birth of the American comic strip.As Thierry Smolderen recounts in his introduction, prototypes of the comic strip appeared in the mid-19th century, from the visual narratives of A.B. Frost to the book-length pictorial stories of Swiss illustrator Rodolphe Topffer. With the advent of the Sunday color newspaper supplements in the 1890s, the stage was set for a group of artists of radical and rambunctious creativity to produce visual mayhem and farcical satire.In a few cases, it was glorified political cartooning, personnified by Richard Outcault's Yellow Kid who served as Hogan's Alley's interlocuter by way of chatty nightshirts. If the Kid reflected the Hearst editorial line, other characters like the Katzenjammer Kids, Little Jimmy, and Happy Hooligan raised riot just for the sheer fun of it.Among these riotous revelers, the Katzenjammers are the least offensive, even with their vaudeville house German. And that should give you fair warning about many of Hans und Fritz's contemporaries, who included monkey-faced Irish folk, blackface caricatures with huge lips, slanty-eyed Chinese, and enough hook-noses to catch a school of gefilte fish.The editors quote art spiegelman's warning that to expurgate such material would leave us with no comic strip history at all. Actually, it would leave us with very little popular culture history whatsoever. As the Sunday pages cut loose, the movies learned to be maniacal under the guidance of directors like Mack Sennett. Composers like Bud de Sylva wrote songs for Al Jolson that would never make it to the airwaves today.But there was underlying beautry beneath the mayhem. Outcault and his "Yellow Kid" successor, George Luks, created stunning visual compositions. Frederick Burr Opper had been creating masterful (and funny) single panels for years; the Sunday pages gave his powers full reign--and his characters, like Alfonse and Gaston, couldn't help but stray into the adjoining panels of Dirks' Katzenjammer Kids. Johnny Gruelle and James Swinnerton were also participants in the formative melee'. And just as Chaplin emerged from Sennett's Keystone and the musical comedy took flight from the realm of "The Black Crook," so too did genius and beauty arise from the anarchy of the Sunday strip: George Herriman's inexplicable "Krazy Kat," Lyonel Feininger's expressionistic "Kinder Kids," and Swinnerton's "Little Jimmy," which, like Herriman's Kat, found its mood in the American southwest. And more wonders came from the tempered talents of Winsor McCay, Cliff Sterrett, George McManus, and Frank King.The knockabout came first, and though some of it may make you wince at its cruelty, you'll also be awed by flashes of brilliance. This book is spectacular collection of the early comic strip, and a time capsule of popular entertainment at the dawn of the 20th century.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    An enormous revelation of a book
  

*by P***Y on Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2013*

The new large, gorgeous tome, Society Is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy at the Dawn of the American Comic Strip 1895-1915 (edited by Peter Maresca and designed by Philippe Ghelmetti), opens a window in time with a cascading trove of re-discovered comics masterpieces so old they seem new again.When the roots of a popular art form take on new life, vital new art emerges -- and with smart, elaborate books like Society Is Nix arriving at what may be the height of the current revival of the American newspaper comic strip, we just might be headed for a comics Renaissance.  The greatest value of a book like Society Is Nix is that it gives us the work of forgotten cartoonists of the distant past who were so different -- and so good -- that we are shocked into meeting their work in the moment, without any cultural preconceptions.There's plenty of amazing pages by acknowledged master sof the form: McCay, Herriman, Outcault, Opper, Swinnerton, etc. But there's a wealth of new discoveries by artists who time has forgotten, until now: Kate Carew, J. Cory Campbell, Percy Winterbottom (George Beckenbaugh), Gene Carr, Augustus Jansson, Alfred Freuh, A.B. Shults, to name just a few.The selection is impeccable. The restoration of the pages is near perfect. And the presentation is extraordinary -- for the simple reason that the pages are presented in their original broadsheet size of 21 inches by 16 inches. This is the size these works were created for. To date, most reprints of early American comics have presented them in greatly reduced format -- and something essential has been lost. The price tag for this book is hefty, but it's worth it -- the quality and content is the best available, and exceeds any expectations.Includes essays by Peter Maresca, Thierry Smoldern, Richard Samuel West, R.C. Harvey, Brian Walker, Alfredo Castelli, Bill Kartalopoulos, David Gerstein, and Paul C. Tumey (me).

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Full Size Format a Major Plus
  

*by C***T on Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2014*

Expected more familiar and better examples of comics, and was disappointed in only a token showing of Little Nemo. The full page format was probably a problem and limited the possibilities, but it was a great pleasure seeing them the size and in detail as they were intended. All in all I am happy to have it.

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*Product available on Desertcart South Korea*
*Store origin: KR*
*Last updated: 2026-01-25*