This week we’re looking at Crazy Cartoons by VIP, published by Fawcett Crest in 1956.
Cover price is fifty cents, I paid a quarter.
Although his style wast instantly recognizable to me the moment I picked this book up, I didn’t know VIP were the initials/pen name for cartoonist Virgil Partch. He was a well-known gag cartoonist throughout the middle of the 20th century, working in magazines and the syndicated comics market for much of his career. Partch’s style was surreal and strange; the tone of his offbeat strips ended up influencing quite a few comic artists up through today. It’s not a big jump to say that a modern gag strips like The Far Side owe a distant debt to VIP’s work.