Simple as a B.C.

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

The main reason Johnny Hart's B.C. is suc a great comic strip is the timing he had as a cartoonist. And nowhere it is as clearly to see as in his silent Sundays. To round out this post, I have added a couple of early daily strips.

Aug 6 1961:


April 1 1958:


April 3 1958:


April 5 1958:

The Prince Of Comics

Monday Cartoon Day.

Early in his career comic book giant Jack Kirby worked for a company calles Lincoln Features, producing several newspaper strips, panels and cartoons that were packaged as cheaply as possible to smaller papers. Most of this work has been lost in time, but NewspaperArchive has enable collectors to see at least some of it (even though it usually is not in the best condition). One of the most interesting features Kirby worked on (with a pseudonym of course, to hide the fact that he did so many features for Lincoln and to make it possible for him to be replaced at a moment's notice) was the themed Ripley ripp-off Facts You Never Knew! I don't know if Kirby wrote these himself, or cobbled them together from different sources or was provided with a script, but they often show glipses of his later style and the subjects were some that never left him for his whole career. The samples I am showing here are from two runs, the lower numbers from wha was possibly the first run in 1939, the hogher numbers from a reprint run in 1942, when Kirby had moved on to bigger and better things.

Comic Book God

Sunday Quick Fix.

I started uploading these Johnny Quick stories from DC's adventure Comics from the middle of Mort Meskin's run, not because his earlier work wasn't impressive but because I wanted to get to the realy good stuff as soon as possible. As from last week we have now entered what I consider to be Meskin's prime period on this strip.

This time around we have another impressive splash page, with Meskin's trademark multiple figures way of depicting Johnny Quick's speed. There is much to applaud in the individual panels (such as the shadow work on the police man in the fourth panel of page two, but overall I want you to have a look at eskin's way of using tilted angles to create a lively and well-balanced page lay-out.

Wizzing Right Along

Saturday Leftover Day.

I have still not found the right gadget to get some sort of kickback from the links I provide for books on Amazon, but I have added another one today but a book yet to be published. I just found it, when I was looking for B.C. Sundays by the current team. In a couple of weeks Titan books will be publishing a 'best off' book about The Wizard of Id. It looks quite similar to the B.C. book Checker did lst year. Checker seems not to have had the succes they wanted with their comic strip reprint books. The Beetle Bailey series they reprinted from the Scandinavian version has been stuck at one volume and there also seems to be no movement on the B.C. from even though a second book was announced. The new go to publisher on this front seems to be Titan, who have lready moved into reprinting classic stuff with their remarkable Simon and Kirby series and the first book in a complete Hagar reprint. At least they seem to be able to generate more publicity and get their books into bookstores as well as comic book outlets. These kind of books belong in normal book stores, even if the publication form is in the more comic book collector form of a complete series. To me, this form represent the best of both worlds. Casual readers get their gags and geeks like me can't afford to miss it. Unfortunately, I completely missed the Wizard book when it was advertised in the Diamond catalogue. If it was advertised in the Diamond catalogue. Let's hope it doesn't slip between the cracks.

Correction, I tried to add this book to the Amazon link, but I don't know how to do that. I really need to try and find out more about it.

Inky Meskin

Friday Comic Book Day.

I recently came across these two Mort Meskin stories from Avon's Witchcraft #4 that I had never seen before. Maybe you haven't either. The first story is writen up as being inked by George Roussos, which seems fully possible to me, seeing the face of the man in the fifthe panel of the fifth page. But it also has som eof that double stroke ink lines Hary Mendrick identified as being a sign of Meskin inking himself. The second story has those same double strokes and none of the characteristics of Roussos' inking, so it could be inked by Meskin as well. Maybe a little extra job he did for the money. He didn't appear in any of the other issues of Witchcraft.

Here's Looking At You, Id

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

Here's some more Wizard of Id for the fans. The most sarcastic strip ever. Nothing could be more alien to our feel good times than Johnny Hart's selfdepricating, alohol-supported worldview.

Nov 1966:

The Family Man And The Boat

Monday Cartoon Day.

I have shown samples of Virgil Partch's Big George before. These dailies csrtoons he did are not as good as the solo cartoons he did all through the fifties and forties, but at some point even the wildest cartoonist has to settle down. These are from the ealry years, when Big George was primalary a strip about a man his family and his boat. Partch lover boaig and he even did a feature article about movig his boat across the country for True, which I will ad here later.

Wizzing Along

Saturday Leftover Day.

Yes, I know. Today's Sunday. But I did today's post yesterday, so let's pretend everything is all right and Blogger is just messing with our heads. Since I am in an audience pleasing mood, let's upload the last of the Sundays I scanned befre my scanner went on the blink. I have added some more stips from Sept and Nov 1966.

May 1 1966:


July 24 1966:


Sept 28-30 1966:

He Ain't Messin'

Sunday Quick Fix.

When I was preparing this post I was struck by the fact how much more exciting these Johnny Quick stories were than every else in Adventure Comics. Superboy seems to have been kept purposedly dull, The Green Arrow by George Papp remains earthbound, Paul Reinman's Aquaman doesn't have any of Reinman's later excitement (in the fifties, before he dulled down again in the sixties), Shining Knight was no beacon, etc. The Johnny Quick splash alone is worth the entrance fee.

The Real GT

Friday Comic Book Day.

While I was in hospital George Tuska passed away (at a very respectable age). I have been collecting scans of his work for sometime and will try and show some of it in a more complete form at a later date. Tusk was one of the better artists working in the comic book version of the Caniff style. His work for Biro in the forties was very influencial and some of the stuff he did for and with Stan Lee in the early fifties was very good and showed how much of a pure comic book artist he was long before his kills were used by Marvel in the sixties. When he turned to newspaper strips in the late fifties, he was one of the first to simplify the Caniff style into something that could be reprinted and read at a much smaller scale. As such he may have contributed to the shrinking of the realistic comic strip. But is was to darned readable that I can only marvel at his skill. His early work on Secret Agent X-9 deserves much more recognition hat it has been getting and his better know work on Buck Rogers in the early sixties should be seen by those marvelites who only know him as yet another not very satisfactory superhero artist. As for that, he really proved his adaptabillity as an artist when he changed his style in such a way that he did become a very competent superhero artist, ending up doing superheroes for the newspaper page. Here are some quick samples of his work. More later.

For me, Tuska's style in the midfifties is my favorite. A slick and toned down version of the Caniff style, that worked really well on comics and apparently in newspapers as well. His run on Secret Agent X-9 started in 1954 and deserved more attention that it has been getting. From May 1958:






His Buck Rogers was a great sample of balance and design. I have long runs of this strip, which I will share when I have finished doing Tom Corbett:

He did some pretty funny stuff for Joe Simon's Sick in the sixties.Pat of what I like about Tuska's work in the fifties, is his tendency to ad cartooon elements to the Caniff realism. In that regard he is like Will Eisner, Walt Kellly, Albert Uderzo, Ross Andru and all artists I really like from any period. Some of his best stories are the almost satirical things he did for Stan Lee in 1954. For Joe Simon he really acted this out, although it slowly disappeared from his later work:

Give My Regard

Thursday story strip day.

In my article on Mad imitations in Alter Ego #86 I make no secret of the fact that I am a huge fan of the work of Bill Overgard. Overgard is one of those Caniff-inspired artists, who could make the comic page swing if he wanted to. For Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer's Whack he did some of the best and spot on comic strip parodies this side of Bill Elder. Soon after doing those he took over the Saint newspaper strip (daily and sunday). The strip was started by Mike Roy, who used lot's of assistants, including Jack Davis in 1950. after Roy, the strip was drawn by an artist I am not familiar with. And then for about six years Overgard took over. Apparently he was recommended for that job by Caniff himself.

Which makes it extra sad that he didn't do a good job of it. This was not the Overgard I loved and admired from Whack. I have many samples from this strip, but I can can be bothered to scan them. I do have a lot of the earlier strips from the late forties, whih I will scan sometime. But for now I have a few Sundays from the period after Overgard. For about a year the strip was drawn by Doug Wildey and he did a great job. Wildey (another Caniff-inspired artist) was mainly working comic books at that point and had not yet gotten hung up about photo realism as much as he would later. In comics h minly did westerns, but here in The Saint he really sines. These are four seperate Sundays, so don't expect to be able to follow the story. My collection if these is spotty, but I would love to read a longer sequence if I could.

May 28 1961:


July 9 1961:


July 16 1961


Aug 6 1961: