An entire year of strips. Both dailies AND Sundays. This Fantagraphics series is the only reprinting to include the Little Orphan Annie Sundays (Arf!, Cupples and Leon, Dover, and IDW only reprint dailies).
From the introduction:“When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933 (a few months after the strips in this volume began their initial fun), the stage was set for a confrontation between Gray’s conservatism and FDR’s New Deal philosophy.Oddly enough, Little Orphan Annie would reach the zenith of its popularity during the Depression ‘30s. “Odd” because it was FDR’s decade, the age of the man who gave government a social conscience. And FDR’s mission ran in directions diametrically opposed to Gray’s ideas. Under Roosevelt’s tutelage, the downtrodden and the poor, the halt and the lame were encouraged to look to government for help rather than exhorted to help themselves by working hard and exercising diligently the principles of free enterprise. Gray’s message was precisely the opposite - although it was as much an accident of this story as it was a matter of political opinion.”