Books for Sale

This has precious little to do with comics, but since I have the bully pulpit, doggone it, I'm gonna use it.

I am currently beginning to auction a big batch of collectible books on eBay, trying to thin my library down just a tad. Nothing specifically cartooning oriented so far; these are mostly obscure and scarce books I've picked up over the years with 'one of these days' resale in mind. Subjects and vintage are all over the board.

So do me a solid, bro, and click the link below to see what's up for auction right now. If there's anything you see that looks interesting, remember that each bid is helping underwrite the Stripper's Guide blog's chief cook and bottle-washer.

Click  here  for my auctions on eBay  

Okay, okay. Gotta have something comics related. I always wondered why the mid-1970s comic strip fanzine "Bulldog" had that name. I couldn't figure out what the term had to do with the subject. Well, I was just perusing my newly purchased copy of Bulldog #8 (March 1975) and I got my answer. Here it is, straight from publisher Steve Kristiansen:

Way back when I was forming the idea of putting out a comic strip adzine, I had thought that there would be ads only for Sundays (not realizing the integration of daily and Sunday collecting). At that time I was under the impression that the word "bulldog" was newspaper jargon for paper subscriptions to households that received the Sunday editions only. This is an incorrect definition of the bulldog term, but it was the 'working name' I assigned to my Sunday strips adzine project. I didn't particularly like the name, but it stuck as I planned (and refined) the nature of the fanzine. When it finally came time to submit ads to the major adzines I was unable to come up with a flashy name, so I used the Bulldog working name. I received a lot of ribbing about this rather distinctive title at first, but by now I think everyone is pretty used to it.

So, the title was the result of a misunderstanding. Fair 'nuff. I'll just put in my two cents that a 'bulldog edition' of a newspaper was the first edition to hit the streets, back when newspapers actually published multiple editions through the morning or evening hours.

I have no idea what the newspaper slang is for Sunday-only subscriptions -- do you?

Herriman Saturday will return next week.