White Collar

Giacomo Patri's sole-created work for Pisani Printing & Publishing Co., White Collar is a single-issue graphic novel from 1940 that stands as an early, earnest examination of middle-class life during the Great Depression. Through stark, woodcut-style illustrations, Patri follows an ordinary office worker's struggle with unemployment and economic hardship, offering a poignant social commentary that predates the more famous graphic novels of the era. Its raw, expressionist art and focus on working-class dignity make it a notable, if brief, entry in the history of American comics.