As I may have mentioned before, my office is next door to a restaurant/used book store. It's an odd combination, I know, but they make it work for them. They have pretty good sandwiches, so I'm over there at least once a week. While waiting for my takeout order, I usually prowl around the book section.

I've found some really good stuff there. I've never quite understood their pricing, though. Most paperbacks sell for about 50% of cover price. Most hardcovers sell for three dollars or less. If they have a particular book in both formats, the hardcover will be about half the price of the paperback. Go figure.

The goofy pricing makes paperbacks seem very overpriced, so I normally stick to the hardcovers and the bargain table. The bargain table (twenty-five cents each or five for a dollar) has had some real jewels lately. A small collection of classic Andy Capp books from the 60s and 70s just recently turned up there. I found the first batch, more recent books from the 70s, about six weeks ago. Just last week I found a second batch, this time older books from the mid-60s.

I always loved Andy Capp when I was a kid. But as I read these books with adult eyes, I can't figure out what I liked about them. I suspect my affinity for the character has its roots in the bottom of a bag of Andy Capp's Cheddar Fries.

I don't know what I saw in Andy Capp when I was a kid, but I certainly enjoy the character now. But hey, who wouldn't love a cockneyed, alcoholic, philandering layabout?

Over the years, the comic's publishers have taken heat for negative stereotypes. I can certainly understand that. After all, the strip's main character is a cockneyed, alcoholic, philandering layabout. It would be very difficult to make that entertaining without perpetuating a few preconceived ideas.

Andy Capp's been around since the late 50s. Anything that lasts for 50 years is going to evolve. It was a bit of a shock when I bought the second, older batch of books and saw exactly how much this particular strip had changed.

In the newer 70s books, Andy is a brawling kind of character. He gets in fights with bartenders, referees, neighbors, his mates, and even his wife. The violence is always either implied (like seeing Andy's cheeks flush red while he pushes up his sleeves), or deliberately vague. In particular the fights with his wife, Flo, are of the latter variety.

Andy's fisticuffs are usually drawn as odd little tumbleweed swirls of activity, like a tornado on its side with feet and fists protruding at odd angles. I'd subconsciously thought of those little swirls as gender-neutral. It's obvious that Andy and Flo are both aggressive combatants. Rarely would one ever see the aftermath of one of these dervishes of violence, so I'd always assumed that the two of them came out about even.

Not so in the older books. I now assume that the ambiguity of the 70s was a result of backlash to the directness of the 60s. 70s Andy Capp was a cad, but a lovable cad. 60s Andy Capp was a wife-beating bastard. Those tumbleweed swirls replaced open and unambiguous spousal abuse. Those older books not only show Andy smacking around anyone who crosses him, they also show a world where that kind of violence is commonplace enough to be the subject of jokes. Check the cover on the right.

Andy has obviously just slugged his wife, but "the vicar" (a priest of the Church of England) shows neither surprise nor concern. And this is what they put on the cover. The whole book is filled with this sort of thing. Unlike the newer books where the violence is glossed-over, here it is on full display. The fact that Andy's thuggery can be the subject of a joke speaks volumes about the social dynamics of everyday life in northern England in the 50s and 60s.

Andy beats his wife and punches anybody who annoys him. Yet he's portrayed as a lovable goon. The books are still fun and still funny. But they're funny in the same way a racial joke is funny: I laugh… and then I immediately feel guilty for laughing.