The Ruling Clawss by Syd Hoff

The New York Review of Books has published a collection of political cartoons by Syd Hoff, best known now as the author/illustrator of the children's book Danny and the Dinosaur. The Ruling Clawss; The Socialist Cartoons of Syd Hoff shows his pre-children's book days as a political gag cartoonist. 

 

 

 

 

Philip Nel provides the background:

During his career as a New Yorker cartoonist, and before he wrote Danny and the Dinosaur, Syd Hoff wrote under a different name. He was A. Redfield, a cartoonist for the communist newspaper the Daily Worker, and a scourge of the rich and powerful.

Scorning what he saw as the complicity and stale jokes of cartooning peers, Hoff set his sights on the ruling class and revealed them for what they were: hilariously inept, deeply selfish, and incredibly dangerous. Hoff spared nothing from his pen, lampooning police brutality, thin-skinned industrialists, racists, and the looming threat of fascism at home and abroad.

 

 

The 184 page book, published this month, is now discounted at the NYRB site. And scroll down for more books on comics.