It's about time that the best work by the pioneering cartoonist T. S. Sullivant was collected into a single volume. Known as an artist's artist, revered by 20th century cartoonists ranging from
Walt Kelly to Jim Woodring, his work is notoriously difficult to find-which may be why there hasn't been an extensive collection of his drawings and cartoons published until now.
T. S. Sullivant (1854-1926) didn't start cartooning until he was 32 years old, but before he was 40, he had helped alter the face of comedic art in America, ushering it into the 20th century.
Until Sullivant's drawings of animals exaggerated facial and anatomical features to the point of caricature, most American cartoonists were more illustrators than cartoonists: they drew
realistically and cross-hatched copiously. Sullivant (and Eugene "Zim" Zimmerman) changed that, inaugurating the typical caricatural methods of modern cartooning-big heads, big feet. Sullivant,
famed for drawing animals, cave men (and women), rummy Irishmen, and Biblical characters with anachronistic abandon, did most of his cartooning for the old Life humor magazine
(1883-1936), with a few years' detour to a rival, Judge. During that period, Sullivant received the accolade of the age: he was employed briefly by William Randolph Hearst to do
political cartoons for the New York Journal American.
Apart from his significance in the history of American cartooning, Sullivant is widely admired for the sheer pictorial comedy of his cartoons. Pogo's Walt Kelly called him a "one and
only genius. Sullivant," Kelly continued, "was the man that the atelier painters looked to when they sought out solidity in drawing, in form and in the holy release of caricature." And Kelly
paid Sullivant the ultimate homage, producing a Sullivant-like series in about 1967 in which a few of Kelly's swampland critters found themselves in "Prehysteria," a primitive land populated by
Sullivant animals and a well-hatted human named Noah.
This book marks the first comprehensive collection of this cartooning genius's work: a healthy sampling of his Life cartoons from his debut in the magazine in 1888 to his last cartoon
in 1926, published posthumously; a healthy helping of his 1905-1909 work for Judge; and a short biography and evaluation by compiler R. C. Harvey and an appreciation by Richard
Marschall.
