Curated Discoveries from the Outer Edges of Print Culture
A publishing house specializing in comics history
A selective second-hand bookshop
A source for rare comic and cartoon art scans
New Additions to the Collection
"An impeccably researched and well-presented collection”
- Richard Pound, The Comics Journal
"A fascinating close-up of a master developing a visual language for comedy and storytelling."
- Steve Smith, Panels & Prose
“Paul Tumey is one of today's most insightful comic art historians … I have been involved in the comic strip field for over 40 years and still learned so much from Tumey's history of Judge magazine in the book.”
- Rob Stolzer, Inkslingers
A lost chapter of comics history, restored and brought back to life. This first volume in an ambitious ongoing series collects every Judge comic and cartoon Milt Gross created between 1923–24—fully restored, annotated, and placed in context.
In these early works, Gross pushes himself to master pantomime storytelling, laying the foundation for his later breakthroughs. As Paul C. Tumey argues, this brief but explosive period captures the birth of Gross’s signature style: kinetic, inventive, and tightly controlled.
Featuring a foreword by Drew Lerman and a special contribution by Noah Van Sciver, this richly produced volume also includes a 60+ page supplements section with rare material and a complete run of Hitz and Mrs. A must-have for fans and a major contribution to comics scholarship.
All orders include a randomly selected archival postcard from the Erratic Press collection.
8 restored documentary photo postcards
Featuring Superman, Dick Tracy & the Sunday funnies
Exclusive illustrated essay by Paul C. Tumey
Image-by-image historical notes
Step into the Golden Age itself — real Americans, in kitchens, farmhouses, and city streets, absorbed in the comics that shaped a generation. Selected from over 170,000 government documentary photographs of the era, this collection reveals comics not as nostalgia, but as lived culture.
Includes work from some of the greatest American photographers of the twentieth century, including Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Esther Bubley, and Russell Lee.
An 82-page digital magazine (presented in spreads) drawn from a private comics history research archive of over 150,000 items assembled over 15 years: obscure cartoonists, forgotten strips, unusual documents, and visual oddities that rarely surface in print.
Feature Story: Lost comics found in employee magazines, including rare early work by George Swanson ($alesman $am)
Strip reprint: The first week of two great-but-obscure comic strips, Vanilla and The Villains by Darrell McClure (and likely written by Harry Hershfield) , and Inventions of Mr. Knickknack by Don Herold
Recovered article: "How The Comikers Regard Their Characters" (1917, Cartoons magazine)
Comic Book find: A complete Air Wave story penciled, inked, lettered, and colored by George Roussos
Lost Document: A complete twelve-page 1961 National Cartoonist Society (NCS) newsletter - loaded with candid information
And more surprises!
Discover new cartoonists, rare comics history, and unexpected connections—without spending years digging through archives yourself.
This is for readers who enjoy discovery—who like seeing the material behind the finished story.
This is not a finished monograph—it’s a curated window into the research process itself, presented with the same care and visual attention as my published work. In many cases, the material I am sharing points the way to further veins of research, where more comics gold can be found.
Created by Paul C. Tumey, Eisner-nominated author of Screwball! The Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny and The Art of Milt Gross series.
An Erratic Press publication!