Gasoline Alley is a comic strip that still runs today, and was begun in 1921 by a brilliant cartoonist named Frank King. The strip follows car mechanic Walt and the baby boy he finds abandoned on his doorstep and names Skeezix.

Have you ever seen a Frank King Sunday strip? Words do not exist to describe the beauty. We’re not talking modern Sunday comic strips here, most of which are indistinguishable from their weekday companions (just a few more panels and some paint-by-numbers computer coloring done at the syndicate). We’re not even talking Calvin and Hobbes Sundays, though heaven knows those are gorgeous. Living in the Philistine Age, Watterson had to fight tooth and nail to get even half the space which was regularly awarded to strips in the 1920’s.

No, we’re talking Sunday strips the way George Washington meant them to be when he offered up a remarkably foresighted article to the nascent Constitution in 1787, requiring every newspaper in the 13 States to carry at least ten pages of comics, with full-page color printing on Sundays. Did you know that Washington was a huge comics fan? Unfortunately the article was killed by Alexander Hamilton, who had gotten a sneak peek at a strip proposed by Tom Paine called “Doonesbury,” named after the small Pennsylvania town that Paine had holed up in during the brief days after the American Revolution. Based on what he saw of Paine’s strip, Hamilton was convinced that comics would become a tool to encourage the people to mock and deride the ruling class, so he quickly put the kibosh to the amendment. Paine went off to try and help with the French Revolution, falling in briefly with a family by the name of Trudeau…and the rest is history, of a sort.

But back to those Sunday strips. We’re talking full-page, beautifully-colored flights of fancy. And while Windsor McCay or George Herriman may have been as good as Frank King, nobody was ever better. From simple scenes of perfectly rendered domestic comedy, to surreal color experiments that take the breath away, the 96-page collection SUNDAYS WITH WALT AND SKEEZIX is an exploration of the endless possibilities of a single page of comics. Hardbound, digitally-restored, and–most importantly–printed at the ORIGINAL SIZE (!!!GLORIOUS SLACK-JAWED WONDER!!!) of 16 x 21 inches, this isn’t just the ultimate coffee table book–it can double as the coffee table.

I know, I know, the book is 95 Bucks. But it’s easy: just take all the money you’ve saved by not buying Countdown this whole time (because I know you didn’t get suckered in by that crap) and, boom, the book is paid for. Trust me, it’s worth it.

(NOTE: Walt and Skeezix being produced when it was, there are a few instances of the black stereotype common to the era. I choose to take the bad with the good and wince through it, but if you are someone who simply cannot bring yourself to overlook or struggle through the ignorance of the past…well, you’ve been warned.)