We reviewed the original "Little Lulu" compendium here - ReadItDaddy's Comic / Graphic Novel of the Week - Week Ending 29th November 2019: "Little Lulu: Working Girl" by John Stanley (Drawn and Quarterly)
...and we love these strips so much that we leapt on this new compendium as soon as it was released.
If you're not a comic history buff, you probably won't have a clue who Little Lulu is, nor who her creator - John Stanley is. Suffice to say that back in the era these strips first appeared in Dell Comics (the 1940s), Lulu's brand of feminist sass was pretty unique, featuring a heroine who could hold her own against the (quite often dumb) boys who also inhabit the strips.
In this second series, John Stanley hones his strip-creation craft to the nth degree, often creating longer narratives to cover story ideas that are brilliant even for modern readers who want to share comics with their kids that put forward the sound philosophy that girls are every bit as capable, tough, fun-loving and - yes - prone to getting into trouble as boys are.
Though this collection also features Lulu's hapless bestie Tubby quite prominently, Lulu is undoubtedly the star of the show and it's fair to say that most of the stories only featuring Tubby really do highlight what an insufferable asshole he can be, with the world's brassiest neck and knack for getting away with things that any kid back then would probably have received a thick ear for.
There was one strip that sang out in particular in this collection, a story where Lulu is fed up to the back teeth of being treated poorly by her peers, so asks her mum to 'doll her up' - transforming this ugly duckling into a beautiful swan who suddenly gets a lot of the attention and favour of the boys. You'd expect at this point I'd be ranting about how awful the message in this strip is, yet again Stanley was way ahead of his time, using this story foil purely to underline that when Lulu becomes a 'stunning beauty' she's immediately cast into the mould of being all surface, just something pretty to look at, with none of her previous character's appeal. It's subtle, funny and very nicely done so watch out for that one.
Drawn and Quarterly have once again done a fantastic job of presenting the strips and a little of the history behind them, as well as more from "Lulu's Diry (sic)" - those lengthier / wordier missives from our heroine as she scribbles in her diary.
Presented with tons of extra goodies like original cover art etc, this is another fantastic collection of Lulu strips gathered together in one mighty (and appropriately pricy) hardback volume. Despite the price, it's well worth shelling out for, as I said above the ideas and strips here were way, way ahead of their time and are often cited by women as being hugely influential and important when they were growing up, so dive into the world of Little Lulu, you won't be disappointed!
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