A stroll through the Boca Raton's new cartoon museum was like a meeting with long-lost friends for hundreds who came to the grand opening of the International Museum of Cartoon Art.
Mutt and Jeff, Barney Google and Felix the Cat were just some of the more than 160,000 works by artists from 50 countries on display at the Mizner Park museum.Herman Rudnick, 77, of Philadelphia, said the cartoons brought back memories of reading the funny pages over a homemade Sunday breakfast.
"The comics back then weren't so political," he said.
A 1908 Katzenjammer Kids cartoon caught the attention of Maura Allen, 37, who was visiting from Seattle with her husband.
"It's amazing the things that are not politically correct anymore that they got away with back then," she said.
And for computer graphics student Lourdes Alarcon, 23, the 1920s-era Buster Brown cartoons revealed that young Buster was a cartoon before he was shoe.
"That's pretty cool," Alarcon said.
The museum's mission is to increase the exposure of cartoon art and to teach people that cartoons are a legitimate art form, said Catherine Walker. Her husband, Mort Walker, is creator of "Beetle Bailey" and "Hi and Lois," and is founder and chairman of the museum.
The museum's most valuable collection is the $5 million 36-panel story-board for Walt Disney's movie "Plane Crazy." The 1927 cartoons, drawn by Disney animator Ub Iwerks, are said to be the first drawings of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Catherine Walker said.