WALT #2 in the Syracuse Herald Journal

"Walt and Skeezix: 1923 & 1924"
Drawn and Quarterly Books; $29.95.

Moving slightly inland, Drawn and Quarterly Books has just put out the second volume of Frank King's family epic, "Walt & Skeezix," collecting his "Gasoline Alley" daily strips from the years 1923 and 1924. But even though the Alley is located in the MidWest, young Walt Wallet and the foundling Skeezix find themselves having adventures in Utah and Nevada, not to mention Walt's New York to California car race with neighbor Avery.

Oh, and Skeezix gets kidnapped. (The nationwide search for the absent infant even includes Syracuse!)

This volume shows us King growing as an artist, as well as Skeezix growing as a child. "Gasoline Alley" is one of the few strips that allowed their characters to age at a (more or less) natural rate, and so the newborn baby from the first strips is actually talking in complete sentences by the end of this volume.

The strips herein are classic pieces of early 20th-century Americana, letting us in on the attitudes and interests of just plain folk of the 1920s (politically incorrect warts and all). Essentially a soap-opera on paper, King's characters continue to captivate, even after more than 80 years.

And if two years' worth of a classic comic strip isn't enough, the book includes massive amounts of information and photos designed to put the strip in historical perspective, an endnote section explaining terms and references that modern audiences might not be familiar with (I was glad to finally find out what a "grass widow" was), and an extended sequence from Sidney Smith's "The Gumps," the original soap-opera strip, and an influence on King.

Jeff Kapalka