TAKE A LETTER YOURSELF! Drawings by Frank Modell

Secretaries grab power from their chauvinist bosses in this 1982 jokey paperback with drawings by the great Frank Modell.

This 1982 TAKE A LETTER YOURSELF! book was written as a tongue in cheek guide for female secretaries to turn the tables on the white males in power. It was written by Kathy Matthews and illustrated by the great cartoonist Frank Modell. It's copyright both of them, and was published by Ballantine.

The energy in Mr. Modell's line is what captivated me to buy this book from a second-hand dealer in Bristol, NH. I found the book was on a large shelf on the second floor of a barn full of books.

What I like is that you can see the speed in which Modell is drawing. Sometimes the ink can't catch up! And sometimes you can see some of the light pencil construction lines in the wash drawings.

This is what great cartooning looks like: vital, energetic and fun. These are just a few of the drawings from the book.

  -- Edited from a blog entry of June 22, 2015.