The beloved characters of Earl and Mooch are back in a collection of a year's worth of color Sunday and black-and-white daily cartoons. "Shining through this artful, delicious and--dare I say--adorable confection is Patrick McDonnell's love affair with old comic strips. His Mutts evokes an effervescent bliss, drawn from a century-old tradition, dating from Buster Brown to Charlie Brown that, in an instant, turns words and pictures into poetic-play. And oh, how Mr. McDonnell can play. His joyful meditation brings glee (in a balloon of course) to an old cartoonist's heart."  -- JULES FEIFFER, cartoonist "I used to think the classic newspaper comic strip was dead, but Mutts proves there really is some kind of life after death: It's a playful visual pleasure that knows its comic strip heritage without wearing it on its sleeve, it's smart without being pretentious, and it's sweet without being cloying. It's a miracle!" -- ART SPIEGELMAN, cartoonist   In 1994, Patrick McDonnell created the comic strip MUTTS, which now appears in over 700 newspapers and 20 countries. McDonnell has received numerous awards for this strip, including the National Cartoonists Society's highest honor, the Reuben, for Cartoonist of the Year, five Harvey Awards for Best Comic Strip, Germany's Max and Moritz Award for Best International Comic Strip, and the Swedish Academy of Comic Art's Adamson Statuette.   In this 17th chronological collection of Mutts strips, a year's worth of color Sunday strips and black-and-white daily strips are included, along with pop-art splash pages that highlight McDonnell's imaginative artwork and distinctive style.