What Fools These Mortals Be: The Story of Puck
IDW Publishing 2014

Description: “With nearly 300 color plates, What Fools These Mortals Be: The Story of Puck is the first full-color monograph devoted to the most important political satire and cartoon magazine in American history. The weekly journal’s deft caricatures and pointed commentary made it a political force to be reckoned with. It is credited with single-handedly thwarting the third-term ambitions of Ulysses S. Grant in 1880 and electing Grover Cleveland to the presidency in 1884—or at least by its devastating ‘Tattooed Man’ series, denying it to James G. Blaine. And Puck did it with art—lavish color full-page and two-page centerspread cartoons. Many of the issues that dominated Puck’s pages more than one hundred years ago continue to influence the political debate today.”

Praise: “Perhaps the Puck cartoons reprinted in this beautiful book will remind us of the power, scope, and artistic possibilities we’ve long neglected.”
—Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes