Published under the pseudonym A. Redfield by prominent New Yorker
contributor Syd Hoff in the 1930s, these mordant and marvellously
drawn gag comics skewer the rich and powerful with a pointed pen.
During his career as a New Yorker cartoonist, and before he wrote
Danny and the Dinosaur, Syd Hoff wrote under a different name.
He was A. Redfield, a cartoonist for the communist newspaper the
Daily Worker, and a scourge of the rich and powerful.
Scorning what he saw as the complicity and stale jokes of cartooning
peers, Hoff set his sights on the ruling class and revealed them for
what they were: hilariously inept, deeply selfish, and incredibly
dangerous. Hoff spared nothing from his pen, lampooning police
brutality, thin-skinned industrialists, racists, and the looming
threat of fascism at home and abroad.
This new edition of The Ruling Clawss includes a new
introduction by the historian Philip Nel, who reveals
the story
behind the rise and disappearance of Hoffʼs Redfield. The Ruling
Clawss cements Hoff as a master of the gag comic, whose work
remains powerfully funny and troublingly resonant.
