Walt Lardner’s Little Leager From 1956 Rereleased As Meager Leager

Back in 1956, Walt Lardner was a younger journal cartoonist who created a brief guide’s price of cartoons concerning the unnamed star of the Burps boys’ baseball group and his adventures on and off the sphere. Three years later, he would create the sequence Pipsqueak for Archie Comics, a incontrovertible fact that in the present day makes him one of many few surviving comedian guide creators from the Fifties. From there he would roll on to a profession in virtually all facets of the cartoon arts, as an animator, a syndicated panel cartoonist, an editorial cartoonist, and a kids’s guide illustrator. With all that success, that early guide of cartoons has been neglected… till now.

Meager Leager, simply launched by About Comics, is a reprint of that cartoon guide. When it was first printed (below one other title that may infringe on a trademark held by a well-liked youth baseball league, Little Leaguer or Leo The Little Leaguer), it came from Abbey Books, the place it was an uncommon addition to their catalogue; whereas they printed nothing however cartoon books, all of their different cartoon books had been spiritual in nature.

Lardner would revisit the youth baseball theme a decade later, with “Leo the Little Leaguer”, a every day syndicated panel cartoon about totally different gamers on a group referred to as the Mets. It was even set in the identical cartoon universe because the Meager Leaguer cartoons, because the Burps present up because the Mets’ opponents at instances.

Because of About Comics’ line reprinting spiritual cartoon books of the period, About Comics has reprinted almost every other book that Abbey Press ever published. Some of them had been acclaimed, like Al Kilgore‘s adventures of an angel, Little Gabriel. Others are attention-grabbing examples of their time, just like the sequence of nun comics booklets collected into the Angels Everywhere! quantity. It took a very long time for them to have the ability to even contemplate reprinting their one non-religious publication, just because it was so exhausting to discover a copy. But it’s an attention-grabbing instance of cartooning from that point, and now anybody else who needs to learn it may discover a copy fairly simply.

Lardner granted private permission for this reprint stating “I hope this work is enjoyed by a new generation of readers.” He lives in retirement in South Carolina, the place he spent most of his working life.

The guide isn’t provided via any direct market distributors; shops involved in a wholesale order ought to contact questions@aboutcomics.com