The Gaze Of Drifting Skies: A Treasury Of Bird's Eye Cartoon Views by Various Artists

The Gaze Of Drifting Skies: A Treasury Of Bird's Eye Cartoon Views Reviews

• 
  Matt

  "These are not fixed images to be admired, nor read by any matrix or schema, as much as they are worlds to be explored. Uniquely, the element of time is pervasive but not central."
  I kinda wish I came up with this intro when I was studying Art History. To me this is the easy way out of not wanting to individually research every piece and provide a better understanding for each piece. The collection of art work is impressive and they are definitely worlds for exploration, but I think if I just showed "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" or "Massacre of the Innocents" by P.Bruegel and just gave that intro, my professor would have given me an incomplete or straight up failed me. I did enjoy the book, but it just felt like a google search that was printed into a book.
• 
  Jonathan Bogart

  Anyone who's followed my various internet presences for any length of time will know that I'm fascinated by the magazine cartooning of the early twentieth century, so when I saw reference to the upcoming publication of this book online it became one of my top priorities, and I snapped it up the moment I had a spare hour to visit the comics shop.
  
  I flatter myself that I was already familiar with a lot of the work between its covers (I've even posted scans of a handful of the cartoons in the book to my Tumblr over the years), but having it all in one place to pore over again and again, and to have such a wide variety of material, from late-nineteenth-century panoramas to 1940s Sunday comics, makes it a treasure. From quality of reproduction to choice of artists represented to the surprisingly extensive source material (I was especially delighted to see the great Spanish cartoonists Ricardo Opisso and Manuel Garrido), it's one of the best cartooning-reprint books I've seen in ages.
  
  It is, however, marred by publishing great work with practically no context; a one-page introduction that spends most of its time sighing over the pastness of the past and none at all on the history, production, or material context of the panoramic genre it's cataloging is all there is. The list of artists in the back is helpful (or rather, a bare-minimum expectation), but not including publication dates or venues is practically sneering at anyone who wants to know more but doesn't know where to start. I get that reprinting old cartoons, many of which are probably not technically in the public domain, isn't very lucrative and you don't want to attract even frivolous litigation if you can help it, but I (probably unwisely) expect better of Fantagraphics.
  
  Nevertheless, I'd encourage, or even order, anyone even slightly interested in old cartooning to pick up a copy of this book (and perhaps a good magnifying glass too) and spend hours with it. If there weren't a few too many racist caricatures for comfort, I'd even encourage giving it to a child, whose eyesight would be better than yours and who would have more patience for getting lost in its pages.
• 
  Kim

  Incredibly beautiful, must-have anthology of Bird's Eye cartoons. Highly recommended. One of the best books of the year.
  
  Most of works are made in the early 20th century. It would be really nice if there's some contemporary version of this.
  
  One complaint: Although it does include the list of artists at the back, there's no info on date or publication of each cartoon. For any anthology, I would say that's essential. It would have been really great if date / publication / artist info is on the same page as the cartoon.