Screwball! the Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny

Before “screwball” became a movie genre, it was a staple of other forms of American culture, including newspaper comic strips. Emerging from the pressures of a rapidly accelerating technological and information-drenched society, screwball comics offered a healthy dose of laughter and perspective. Comics scholar Paul C. Tumey traces the development of screwball as a genre in magazine cartoons and newspaper comics, presenting the lives and work of around two dozen cartoonists, with an art-stuffed chapter on each.