Product Description

When Pat Brady puts pen to paper, readers can't resist following his original images and tight story lines. This creator pulls more material from the one-child Gumbo family than other cartoonists can with five times the number of characters and settings.

That magic comes through in Brady's seventh collection, Rose is Rose Running on Alter Ego. The lively series of daily and Sunday strips revolves around Rose-devoted wife and doting mother-who, try as she might, just can't keep her biker chick fantasies totally in check. Rose never knows, as she manages her blue-collar husband, Jimbo, and their energy-fired son, Pasquale, when Vicki the Biker may show up. But when the long-haired, short-skirted babe surfaces, it's always with a breath of fresh air and a fresh take on "normal" family life.

Besides appearing on the cover, Rose as Vicki shines throughout the collection, in six new full-page drawings created just for the book. Each shows the seemingly satisfied housewife's alter ego performing some mundane chore demanded by Rose's less adventurous life, while Brady's usual mix of family fun, frolic, and fancy gives Gumbo fans plenty of delight.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #581821 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

About the Author

As a six-year-old, Pat Brady took his drawing materials to church and used the pew as a desk while he sat on the kneeler. By 11, he was submitting comic strips to newspapers. But it wasn't until 1984 that Pat, who studied art and creative writing at the University of Wisconsin, began drawing Rose is Rose full-time for national syndication. Today, his work appears in 600 newspapers, and Pat has been nominated five times for the National Cartoonists Society's Best Newspaper Comic Strip Award and six times for the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. Pat and his wife live in Illinois.

Customer Reviews

Hilarious as ever
Rose is Rose is a comic strip that speaks more to adult women (especially wives and mothers) than anyone else. It is designed to combine cuteness with humor. Pat Brady's new Rose is Rose book "Running on Alter Ego" is a mixed around collection of strips published in newspapers around the nation dating from April 07, 2003 to February 29, 2004. This collection of 250 strips from a span of 287 days (out of 366) provides a wide variety of humor ranging from Peekaboo's diet to a bird 'beak-sync'ing to entertain Rose.

Some disappointing things in this collection are certain stoylines involving 3 or more strips were missing a valuable strip. For example, Peekaboo gets claw snagged on a kite and the whole family struggles to get her back safely to the ground. The last strip of that story, Peekaboo's landing, was eliminated from the book. Some of the others could stand on their own without the missing strip, but this one I felt needed the fourth strip.

Fortunately, some highlights of the book include:
('Titles' are my description of the strip/story)


Being a 'Chain-Breather'
Dreamship and the Mars Rover
First 23 hours
Guardian angel's secret to getting rich
Guardian angel vs mosquito
Life is short
Needing Straight A's
Peekaboo snagged on kite
Play-doh Elvis
Pleading 'Oops!'
Ugly winter hat


And that is just a small sample found among the 127 pages of this book. There are still many more strips that were in the newspapers in the past years that haven't been published in book form, yet. I hope Mr. Brady will one day get every single Rose is Rose strip he's ever written into book format for fans to forever enjoy. --- BTW, I don't get Rose is Rose in my local paper. I have to read it online.

Perfect To Relate With...
"Rose Is Rose Running on Alter Ego" is a nice book to read. The pictures are great, the stories are wonderful. The comic strip itself is a gem. Its about Rose Gumbo, a wife and mother devoted to her husband and son Pasquale, while trying to cope with her regularly boring life. To periodically escape from it, she would often delve in her alter-ego Vicki, a tough-talking, biker babe who looks at life with reckless abandonment and loves to enjoy life to the hilt.
This book is perfect for those who can relate to Rose Gumbo. I'm positive that there are a little bit of Rose Gumbo in ourselves. I have a friend with a Rose-like situation but his alter-ego is also of the female kind. It is a nice gem to read and to sit and relax.

Inventing Visuals, Funny Strips
I've loved "Rose is Rose" since the very beginning. While I miss Pasquale's phonetic speech, the inventions of the later years (the dreamship, Peekaboo) keep this one of the best strips around. The visuals are stunning and the comedy is great.
If there's a knock, it's that sometimes I think Brady works so hard to get a perfect visual that the joke itself isn't that good. It's a small knock, though, because the resulting cartoon is amazing to look at!