Thrift Store Finds: Crazy Cartoons by VIP

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.

thrift store finds: upstate NY finds

A few weekends ago, my family and I went for a little trip to Western New York. We met up with my parents and sister in the hamlet of Fredonia. I went to college in Fredonia for my undergraduate studies and while I’ve been back visiting the town a few times since then, those visits coincided with either holiday weekends or the summer. This was my first trip back to my college while it was in full swing, and it was a very fun experience.

Ellen and I can’t go ANYWHERE without thrift store shopping and this trip was no different. On our first day in town, we ran across a church rummage sale and of course, I have some finds to share with you. Everything we found, we got for $2 dollars. Not $2 dollars each item… $2 dollars TOTAL. The rummage sale was having one of those “You give us two bucks, we’ll give you a bag and you fill it up.”

Keep in mind as well, MOST of our bag was filled with clothing and other Ellen-centric items. These are just my geeky items.

thrift store finds: a parcel of peanuts paperbacks

(Thrift Store Finds is a mostly-weekly “column” of sorts where I discuss some of the cool books I’ve happened upon in my neighborhood St. Vincent DePaul store. Please don’t mistake me for an expert on any of the books I am writing about… I’m just a fan of a bargain.)

I honestly do not have much to say about my collection of Peanuts mass-market paperbacks. This might come as a surprise to some who are accustomed to my writing upwards of a thousand words in a stretch about The Family Circus… but I don’t have a ton to add to what has already been said about Charles Schulz’ enduring comic creation.

Published by Fawcett-Crest, these are probably the paperbacks most familiar to readers of Thrift Store Finds. They were legion throughout the ’60’s, ’70’s, and ’80’s. The very helpful and wonderfully named AAUGH.com informs me that these are known as “half books”, as they collect half the content from a separate collection.

Beyond those facts, I couldn’t say what the hell is going on with the Peanuts paperbacks.