About Comics reprints 1950s strip

 

 

In 1952, just after the launch of such kid comics mainstays as Peanuts and Dennis the Menace, cartoonist Sam Brier (S.B. Stevens) whipped up an odd new strip. “Small World” was about a couple of kids playing house. Or it was about adults, just drawn as kids, occasionally saying chlding things; it’s open to interpretation. “Small World” lasted a few years, and only ever had one collection, a 1954 paperback that has not been common to find.

 

Now About Comics has reprinted that collection, 124 examples of this obscure daily. The book has been reformatted into a 6″x6″ paperback that better fits the art, and priced at a convenient $7.99.

 

“One thing that this strip makes me wonder,” says Nat Gertler, About Comics publisher, “is whether the strip was actually influenced by Peanuts – in which case it was the first of many strips to come – or whether the concept of children with adult sensibilities was just something in the air that both Schulz and Brier were breathing.” Gertler, a Peanuts specialist and author of The Peanuts Collection (Little, Brown, and Co.) has written about Small World at his Peanuts-related blog, the AAUGH Blog.

Small World (ISBN 978-1477477717) is available for immediate order through Amazon.com, as well as European branches of Amazon.