In four new graphic novels, the world is changing, and our heroes are making changes of their own. Happily, the subject of the unflattering picture turns out to be a newspaper editor delighted to find such a promising new talent. In the context of the book’s publication, it’s oddly devastating. Johnson, at various times a shipping clerk, an itinerant musician and a full-time alcoholic, never published a comic strip in his life, at least as far as we know. But he was already hard at work on Volume 91 of the “Wally’s Gang” saga in 1928, when he was 16, predating the first modern comic book by a full seven years.

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Persons: FRANK JOHNSON, Keith Mayerson, Chris Byrne, George, Johnson Organizations: AMERICAN