Eddie Campbell. The Goat Getters: Jack Johnson, the Fight of the Century, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics. Studies in Comics and Cartoons Series. Columbus: IDW Publishing, 2018. Illustrations. 320 pp. $49.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-68405-138-0.
Reviewed by Caryn E. Neumann (Miami University of Ohio Regionals)
Published on Jhistory (May, 2021)
Commissioned by Robert A. Rabe
Eddie Campbell revives the newspaper cartoons of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in The Goat Getters: Jack Johnson, the Fight of the Century, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics. The title is a misnomer as the book lacks a clear argument and does not focus only on Black heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson and the hapless Great White Hopes who fought him. The value of this book—and it is an immeasurable one—lays in the depth that Campbell brings to his discussion of cartoons and the richness of the comics that are reprinted.
Campbell has spent his life working in comics as a writer and artist. He collected enough material on early newspaper cartoonists to pen a book and then added additional material drawn from the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum and Library at The Ohio State University. The Goat Getters focuses on East and West Coast writers, skipping over the rest of the country. As Campbell is not a historian, he stays away from analysis and tends to blunder when he makes historical claims about the world outside of comics. His claim that women were required to turn over their money to their husbands in 1900, for example, is simply inaccurate.
These criticisms do not mean that the book is limited. Campbell’s depth of knowledge is stunning. He tracks cartoonists, including Jimmy Swinnerton and Robert Edgren, from newspaper to newspaper and newspaper section to newspaper section. As Campbell discovered, San Francisco Bulletin cartoonist Tad Dorgan drew political and sports cartoons while also sketching advertisements in the classified section and drawing Victor Hugo for the books section. Campbell discusses artistic techniques, relating that learning art in this era began with shading shapes and that a particular drawing clearly relies on photographic references. Long-legged characters are not worth much analysis, Campbell explains, as this type of drawing was encouraged by the columnar architecture of the newspaper page in this era. Every page is packed with comics, often story comics or sports comics. This is material that is largely inaccessible and the reproductions here will doubtless be a godsend to teachers and scholars.
Campbell has so much wonderful material that it appears he struggled to organize it effectively. This weakness does not detract significantly from the book. The two or three illustrations on every page make this an enormously fun book to read. Possibilities for further research are woven throughout the work. For example, Laura E. Foster, born in 1871 and known sometimes as LEF, may have been the earliest woman drawing political cartoons in the United States. Boxing historians will see many primary sources. In summary, Campbell has created a significant contribution to the comics field, and libraries should strongly consider purchasing his reasonably priced book.
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Citation:
Caryn E. Neumann. Review of Campbell, Eddie, The Goat Getters: Jack Johnson, the Fight of the Century, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics.
Jhistory, H-Net Reviews.
May, 2021.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54257
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