IDW Dives Into Political History With What Fools These Mortals Be: The Story of Puck

IDW Publishing is releasing a retrospective on America’s first successful and most influential [...]

By Jamie Lovett

IDW Publishing is releasing a retrospective on America's first successful and most influential humor magazine, Puck. Puck's 40 year publishing history, form 1877-1918, set the stage for all political cartoons to follow, and will be celebrated this October in What Fools These Mortals Be: The History of Puck.

The coffee table book is being published in conjunction with The Library of American Comics. With nearly 300 full-color plates in an oversized 12" x 11" format, What Fools These Mortals Be: The Story of Puck is the first opportunity for most readers to see so many cartoons from Puck reproduced in color and at a large size.

Stephen Hess, in his seminal history of American political cartooning, The Ungentlemanly Art, said, "It is hard to overestimate the political influence of Puck…during the last two decades of the 19th Century.  It was greater than all newspapers combined."  It is often said that the magazine was single-handedly responsible for thwarting the third-term ambitions of Ulysses Grant in 1880 and electing Grover Cleveland to the presidency in 1884. 

The book is written by Michael Alexander Kahn and Richard Samuel West with reproductions made from their unique collections and supplemented by the Library of Congress, and also features a foreward written by Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson.

What Fools These Mortals Be: The History of Puck will be released in October (12" x 11" hardcover with dustjacket, 328 pp., full color, $59.99, ISBN: 978-1-63140-046-9)

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