The second Marschall Books collection from Fantagraphics is a magnificent collection of Mr. Twee Deedle, Johnny Gruelle’s masterpiece, unjustly forgottenby history and never before reprinted since its first appearance in America’snewspapers from 1911 to 1914.  The title character in the Sunday color page, Mr. Twee Deedle, is a magical wood sprite who befriends the strip’s two human children, Dickie andDolly. Gruelle depicted a charming, fantastical child’s world, filled withlight whimsy and outlandish surrealism. The artwork is among the moststunning ever to grace an Amercian newspaper page, and Gruelle’s painterlycolor makes every page look like it was created on a canvas. Gruelle’s creation was the winning entry out of 1500 submissions to succeed Little Nemo, which the New York Herald was losing at the time to therival Hearst papers. With such import, the Herald added a $2000 prize, a longcontract, and arguably the most care devoted to the reproduction of any color newspaper comic strip before or since.Yet the wood sprite and his fanciful world have been strangely overlooked, partly because Gruelle created Raggedy Annimmediately after the strip’s run, eclipsing not only Mr. Twee Deedle but almost everything else the cartoonist ever did.Mr. Twee Deedle stands as a bizarre time-warp: at a time when most children’s literature and kids’ comic strips weresomewhat violent or starkly moralistic (the Brothers Grimm; the Katzenjammer Kids; and even Little Nemo itself, which often depicted nightmares, fears, and dangers), Twee Deedle was sensitive and whimsical. Instead of stark moralizing, it presented gentle lessons. It reads today like a work for the 21st century… indeed for all times, all ages.Mr. Twee Deedle is edited and includes an introduction by comics historian Rick Marschall. The volume will presentthe first year of the forgotten masterpiece and selected episodes from later years, as well as special drawings, promotionalmaterial, and related artwork.