Ripley's Believe It or Not! Original Daily Cartoons, 1929-1930 is a monster of a book, clocking in at 272 thick pages, each with two large daily cartoons. Starting with Robert Ripley's career as a sports reporter in the 1910s, Original Daily Cartoons, 1929-1930 contains Believe It or Not! comics dating back to 1925, leading up to the syndication of the comic series in 1929. A mix of sports facts, oddities, and freakish accounts, Believe It or Not! captivated a nation for 20 years, leading up to Robert Ripley's death in 1949.
But the story doesn't end there. Ripley's style of cartooning inspired uncountable books, TV shows, radio shows, and even museums. One of my favorite memories of living in South Korea was visiting the Believe It or Not! museum in an amusement park outside of Seoul. It had video footage of a man who could "swallow his nose" by putting his lip over his nose. Next to it was a mirror. As you went around the corner, you found out that it was a two-way mirror, and you could watch people make faces, trying to swallow their own noses.
I look forward to reading and collecting this entire series. I tend to buy comics from the 1920s to 1960s and not read them too much. All of them are fantastic, but there's something decidedly difficult about reading a large book of newspaper stripes that were sometimes printed over the course of two or three years. That difficulty doesn't exist with Believe It or Not! Sure, some of the cartoons are a little far fetched, but that's part of the charm. Robert Ripley was able to put out so many comics and be a success for year up on year simply because he did it better than anyone else. He was a solid cartoonist, but what made him stand out from his peers is the way he traveled the globe, looking for more facts. In the old days, you could get hundreds of dollars for selling proof of an "oddity" to Robert Ripley, should he use it in his daily cartoon. Very highly recommended.
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