A lost, early classic of the graphic novel, now back in print for the first time since 1930.
William Gropper (1897-1977) was born on the Lower East Side of New
York City into a working-class Jewish family. While enrolled at the
avant-garde Ferrer Modern School, he studied under the artists
George Bellows and Robert Henri, and after high school attended the
New York School of Fine and Applied Arts (now the Parsons School of
Design) on a scholarship. Following graduation, Gropper became a
staff cartoonist for Morning Freiheit, a Yiddish newspaper, where
he worked for two decades. He also contributed work to left-wing
periodicals such as The Rebel Worker, Daily Worker, and World, and
founded the leftist magazine New Masses. In 1953, Senator Joseph
McCarthy had Gropper blacklisted, as he believed Gropper's widely
disseminated painting William Gropper's America was inspired by
Communist ideas. In 1970, Gropper published The Shtetl, a series of
color lithographs depicting Jewish village life. He died in
Manhasset, New York.
James Sturm is a cartoonist and the author of The Golem's Mighty
Swing, Market Day, and Off Season. He is also the cofounder of The
Center for Cartoon Studies and Seattle's alt newsweekly, The
Stranger. His writings and illustrations have appeared in The
Onion, The New York Times, the cover of The New Yorker, and in the
pages of several children's books. He lives in Vermont.
Sammy Harkham is a cartoonist and the editor of the influential
comics anthology Kramers Ergot. He lives in Los Angeles.
“Gropper’s book is redolent of popular jazz and Hollywood movies,
part backstage melodrama, part tenement fable, drawn in a
post-Cubist style at once gritty and insouciant. . . . His line is
loose and fluid; his humor is sly; his designs are strikingly
economical.” —J. Hoberman, The New York Times Book Review
"That Gropper manages to bestow characters moving through a
relatively simple plot with such rich inner lives is even more
impressive considering the story is purely visual, relying solely
on his wonderfully expressive brushline to evoke the feelings of
the lovers’ journey from the glitz and glamor of the circus tent to
a rundown tenement apartment … this gorgeously drawn,
touching story is sure to linger with anyone who reads it.”
—Library Journal
"Now that 'the graphic novel' is no longer just a marketing
euphemism for A Very Long Comic Book, I’ve begrudgingly come to
terms with the term—especially since it allows anomalous treasures
like William Gropper’s 1930 story in pictures a new chance to be
discovered. Gropper, a founding editor of the New Masses, was
probably the most revered left-wing American Political painter and
cartoonist of his day, but the low-key love triangle at the heart
of Alay-Oop has little to do with, say, the Triangle
Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed Gropper’s aunt when he was a
kid and helped radicalize him—and that surreal horse in the woman
aerialist’s dream chapter has way more to do with Freud than with
Marx. The book is a witty social realist graphic novel of life
among working-class variety performers—or maybe it’s a graphic
ballad, with its surface simplicity. But the story gains in depth
on repeated viewing—and each viewing is a delight, as Gropper’s
cartooning masterfully reveals character through expressive
gestures in efficiently observed spaces. He tells his story with a
bold, graceful, and athletic brush line—somehow both light and
weighty—that soars and swings across the pages until the artist,
and the woman at the center of this tale, land firmly on their
feet." —Art Spiegelman
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