BLONDIE HC (2025)

"Chic Young (w & a) Celebrating Blondie's 80th anniversary, IDW's Library of American Comics presents Blondie like you've never seen her before. This book collects the early strips by Chic Young for the first time ever, beginning with the first ones from October 1930. Blondie Boopadoop is a light-headed flapper who meets Dagwood Bumstead, the heir to a wealthy, high society fortune. Dagwood's parents are aghast and refuse him permission to marry the blonde, but their son is in love. He and Blondie hatch a scheme-the voracious Dagwood goes on a hunger strike for 28 days, 7 hours, 8 minutes and 22 seconds. This first volume chronicles the amazing and hilarious courtship, and concludes with the spectacular wedding in February 1933!"

"This second volume picks up where Blondie: The Courtship and Wedding left off. The story begins with Blondie and Dagwood on their honeymoon and features one hilarious gag after another. But all is not fun and games when the newlyweds arrive home. Dagwood's parents have disinherited him and the optimistic bumbler must go to work. In the first three years of the strip, Chic Young experimented with different themes and approaches, but it's in the fourth through sixth years reprinted in this volume that he establishes the elements that would make Blondie the most popular comic strip in the world. All of the iconic elements and many of the regular characters in the strip are introduced in these pages: Dagwood's boss Mr. Dithers, his neighbor Herb, the dog Daisy and in 1934, the first of the Bumstead children, Baby Dumpling (who is later given the name Alexander). For millions of readers who've loved the Bumsteads over the years, this essential collection tells the complete tale of the couple's early marital bliss. Produced with the cooperation of the Chic Young family, the book includes an informative and entertaining introduction by Brian Walker that places Blondie in its historical context. This is the very beginning of Blondie and Dagwood's life as we now know it."