Little Orphan Annie, Volume 9: Saints and Cynics, 1940-1941

Little Orphan Annie: The Complete Daily Comics #9

by Harold Gray, Dean Mullaney (Editor)

Axel's back and this time he's not taking any chances! Meanwhile, the lives of gangster Nick Gatt and crusading District Attorney John Tecum become inextricably linked. Plus, Annie crosses paths with the selfish movie star Pete LaPlata, his selfless elderly parents, his discarded wife Peggy, and his neglected son Billy. It's high emotional drama leading into the return of the very much alive "Daddy" Warbucks, now converting his factories for the coming war...all in Volume 9 of The Complete Little Orphan Annie.
Collects dailies and Sundays from February 29, 1940 through November 23, 1941.

Genres: Comic Strips, Comics, Graphic Novels

296 pages, Hardcover

First published March 12, 2013

About the author

Harold Lincoln Gray was an American newspaper artist and cartoonist.

Gray grew up on a farm near the small town of Chebanse, Illinois. He graduated from Purdue University with a degree in engineering, but as an artist, he was largely self-taught. A former letterer for Sidney Smith on The Gumps, he came up with a strip idea in 1924 for Little Orphan Otto. The title was quickly altered by Chicago Tribune editor Joseph Medill Patterson to Little Orphan Annie.
By the 1930s this strip had evolved from a crudely-drawn melodrama to a crisply rendered atmospheric story with novelistic plot threads. The dialogue consisted mainly of meditations on Gray's own deeply conservative political philosophy.
Gray sometimes ghosted Little Joe (1933-72), the strip by his assistant (and cousin) Ed Leffingwell which was continued by Ed's brother Robert. Maw Green, a spin-off of Annie was published as a topper to Little Orphan Annie. It mixed vaudeville timing with the same deeply conservative attitudes as Annie.
Harold Gray was a charter member of Lombard Masonic Lodge #1098, A.F. & A.M. in 1923.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I continue to enjoy each volume, even though some of the stories I read -- in full or part -- years ago. I'm excited that the next volume has what is probably my favorite Annie story, that of the Junior Commandos.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

More dandy continuity. It was especially interesting to be reading this while also reading Jim Thompson's Now and on Earth, written at around the same time and even overlapping in plot somewhat, since wartime manufacture is a subject in both books. Gray is dark in his own way, of course, but Thompson's vision of life seems far more complex and intractable. The resolution of the Nick Gatt plotline was disappointing, as if Gray had written himself into a corner by creating an increasingly sympathetic gangster and just had to extricate himself from that territory of moral ambiguity to get back to his more typical melodramatic territory. He does so quite effectively, of course, with some great adventure stories. The tale of Peter la Plata's redemption, depending as it does on a miraculous surgery that removes pressure from his brain, present from childhood, thereby reforming his character, resonates oddly in Gray's universe. His usual focus on choice is undercut by this explicit invocation of a physical condition as integral to character; la Plata can't be a typical Gray villain, since he has not in fact really been able to choose his destiny. Fabular elements, with heavily religious undertones, continue to mesh with the more realistic (relatively speaking) plots, usually with enough ambiguity to keep them from really undermining the overall tone, though having the Asp claim that he's also known as the "Grim Reaper" might be a little bit too much on the nose. Gray makes heroic efforts to avoid the racism endemic in his day, with some success, though the idea that an Indian Indian could simply change his clothes and pass as a First Nations person is laughable. Nevertheless, overt prejudice is, as usual, reserved for the evil characters.