I don't think I could call myself a second-hand bookstore if I didn't have some Leunig.

A book containing a strange little republic of ducks, anxious men, pompous officials, lovers, lunatics and minor domestic catastrophes a la Leunig. This edition gathers early work that is rougher, darker and more openly satirical than the gentle public image later attached to Leunig. 

These cartoons treat ordinary social life as a badly managed dream. The line is loose and expressive, the jokes often beautifully stupid in the older sense: absurd enough to expose the structures everyone else has agreed not to notice. Seen now, the collection also records the formation of one of Australian cartooning’s most recognisable visual languages. The ducks and gentle eccentrics are here, but so are class resentment, bodily embarrassment, bureaucracy, loneliness and the bleak comedy of people attempting civilisation with equipment plainly unsuited to the task. Leunig’s later work could drift toward consolation; this early book still has teeth.

Penguin Books, 1979 reprint of the 1974 first edition. Paperback. Moderate rubbing, creasing and edge wear; some marks and age-toning, with binding sound.