Thursday, May 15, 2008

Doonesbury too

Inspired by my liking for the latest collection of Doonesbury, I decided to load up on collections from the early decades of the strip. Or to be honest, everything I didn't already have. Or rather, hadn't kept. I think I've read pretty much every strip of the 35 years so far.

Sadly the seventies collections are these tiny things the size of a small crime novel and half as thick. While it's nice they fit in a back pocket, they don't feel satisfactory, and I can't believe everything is in them. And only one strip per page. So I decided to go for the "anthology" or "omnibus" collections, which have at least two years each, and are big books with four strips per page. A lot of reading in one of those, I like it.

Beyond ten years back they are out of print, so I had to find them via Abebooks. And they are all in pretty worn condition. But while it would be nice to get mint condition books (I've suggested to Garry Trudeau that the strip be brought out in a format like The Complete Peanuts), I find that is has advantages that they're worn. I relax more while reading them since I don't have to fear creasing a page or getting a coffee spot on it.

Many years ago I was in a cafe which had topped all the tabletops with laminated pages from Doonesbury collections. Lovely idea.

Here's a photo of the collections which so far has arrived from my splurge a few days ago:

3 comments:

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

"Virgin Mopsy did a triple gainer on the way down the volcano" ROTFWL!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, "she really was a virgin's virgin."

Anonymous said...

I relax more while reading them since I don't have to fear creasing a page or getting a coffee spot on it.

That's why I didn't last long as a member of The Folio Society.

Still, I prefer to buy new since I don't have to worry about there being underlining or writing in a book I get from abebooks or somewhere else. Sometimes they forget to tell you.