Funny Papers chronicles cartoon icon Derby Dugan's beginnings in the rough-and-tumble world of yellow journalism in turn-of-the-century New York, when Hearst and Pulitzer owned tabloid America. The aptly named Georgie Wreckage, a sketch artist for Pulitzer's daily World, rockets to fame as the creator of what becomes a hugely successful cartoon franchise in this, the first book in Tom De Haven's epic trilogy of twentieth-century pop-culture America.

In the second installment of Tom De Haven's rollicking trilogy, the legendary and misanthropic cartoonist Walter Geebus is hospitalized with a mysterious ailment in 1936 New York. Did someone poison the bastard—again? Narrated by Al Bready, a lightning-fast author of pulp fiction, this screwball noir is populated by an unforgettable cast of characters, many of whom have good reason to despise Geebus. A wild and bittersweet look at the cutthroat world of professional cartooning, and peculiarly incisive look at Depression-era America.

In This Sex! Drugs! Kosmic Trooths! And a Comic Book Rebel Named Looby! In his earlier novels, Funny Papers and Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, Tom De Haven embarked on a dazzling tour of twentieth-century America, revealed through the world of the comic strips and their creators. Now in Dugan Under Ground, he transports us to explosive underground comics scene of the sixties. It's 1967, the Summer of Love. Roy Looby, a gifted young cartoonist, deserts his mentor, the legendary strip man Ed Biggs, and heads to join the drop-outs and musicians in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury. In the reckless spirit of the times, Looby creates "The Imp Eugene," a libidinous comic book character who is a far cry from Biggs' signature figure, Derby Dugan—the cheerful icon of a more optimistic generation. Just like his real-world counterpart, hippie cartoonist R. Crumb, Looby is soon celebrated and vilified for his creation. And then he disappears, rumored to have lost his mind during the drug-fueled creation of a cartoon masterpiece. A fabulous, strange trip across a wildly changing America, Dugan Under Ground is a rich, inventive tale about the suffocations of jealousy, the regrets that kill the spirit, and the mythic qualities of American popular culture.