A winner in this year’s Broken Frontier Awards, in the category of Best Collection of Classic Material, The Smythes is a handsome oversized collection of Rea Irvin’s (the New Yorker’s first art editor) 1930s newspaper strip. This volume is a curated compilation of some of the best of the strips, centring on its main years of publication when the titular family were the focus of the comics, before it took a notable change of direction in its latter period. Edited by R. Kikuo Johnson and Dash Shaw it’s one of those archival projects that not only brings the work to new readers but also ensures its accessibility to comics historians.
Set in the Great Depression, The Smythes follows the often rather pedestrian lives of parents John and Margie, with occasional interactions with their young children Willie and Maudie. John is respectable but naïve, often falling victim to circumstance, while Margie is a far stronger character who approaches life with a more obvious confidence. The humour comes from the mundanity of their existences and their attempts at social climbing, a kind of domestic comedy of manners if you like.
It’s social commentary, of course, but on a much more stripped back scale. One that centres on the foibles and amusingly petty concerns of middle class suburbia. Irvin uses forced social niceties and the status-chasing ambitions of his characters to rather fondly poke fun at the absurdities of their world. It’s a more gentle form of humour but that’s perhaps why, nearly a century later, its keen observations still resonate and feel familiar.
While never seeking to be as occasionally experimental with the form like its contemporary family sitcom strip Polly and Her Pals by Cliff Sterrett, The Smythes is nonetheless often perfect in its panel-to-panel storytelling and pacing. John’s near disastrous trip taking a neighbour’s child out for a stroll, completely oblivious to multiple near disasters along the way, for example. Or the delightful farce of Margie getting frantically drawn into an auction bidding war for something she doesn’t want, need or even understand the importance of.
Importantly for a collection of this sort, and perhaps indicative of its popularity among the voters In this year’s BF Awards, is that NYRC’s collection of The Smythes is bursting with extras. An afterword by Caitlin McGurk about the strip and Irvin’s life, other examples of Irvin’s work, some of his New Yorker covers, and a tease as to where the strip went after the material presented herein, all add extra context. A fitting and worthy winner of our Best Collection of Classic Comics Award for 2025 and a much recommended acquisition.
Rea Irvin (W/A), R. Kikuo Johnson & Dash Shaw (E) • New York Review Comics, $39.95
Review by Andy Oliver
