Whatever happened to the future?

Tuesday Newspaper Comic Day.

Today I have a bit of an oddity, slightly linked to one of my previous posts. When I was trying to find the editorial cartoons done by Noel Sickles after his run on Scorchy Smith, I came across a couple of fill-in cartoons by Hank Barrow. Barrow was an AP-artist, just like Sickles and he had won a prize for his cartoons earlier that decade. He went on to do Dumb Dora (taking over from Milt Caniff, who had been hosting the strip) in a style pretty similar to that of Caniff. As an AP artist he was also chartered to draw picture of situations where there we no photographs, such as these two seminal occasions in WW II, the German's retreat from Moskou and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In all of this he showed a remarkable style which made me wonder why he wasn't recognized more. Apparently he did a strip of his own, that has been completely forgotten. It was a sunday panel which looked comically at inventions of the future. There were others after him who did such a thing (most notably Closer Than You Think and Our New Age) but both were more serious than Barrow ever was. Alan Holtz has already show one of the sundays and written about it in a 2006 post, but I have several more, including one by Barrow himself. Barrow started the feature, which was called Thing To Come, in the early forties and left it in the late forties. The panel ran until 1955 under a much less interesting artist called Bresnan.

Milt Notes

Monday Cartoon Day

Here are two more of the wordless book reviews Milt Gross did for Ken magazine in 1939.

From the April 14 issue:


From the May 18 issue:


I'll try and get the last few next week.

The milt taste

Sunday Serial Day.

Milt Caniff illustrating Patricia Wentworth. Next week the last instalment of this serial.

Komic Kareers

Saturday Leftover Day.

Al Hartley is known to most collectors for his romance work in the mid to late fifties for Timely (the company Stan Lee managed, which went on to become Marvel). When superheroes took over comics, he went over to Archie comics and worked there for the rest of his life. While solid, none of this work is exciting. Slightly more exciting are his Christian comic, which he did for an out fit called Spire in the seventies. Most of them are downloadable here: www.carpsplace.com/spire/spire.html (including I Am Johnny Cash comic, for instance). But personally I think he did his best work for Stan Lee's Mad imitations. I have been scanning material for a huge article I have written on the subject for Roy Thomas' comics history magazine Alter Ego. It will appear after the summer and shouold be in the Preview catalogue soon (if not this month). Al Hartley's stories always feature the prettiest ladies you have ever seen. Before that, he mainly did war stories from Stan Lee, which I haven't scanned in yet. He also did covers for the earlier romance books in a more realistic style and it is in that style that he did a series of one page gags for ACG's The Killroys (which also featured the Milt Gross stories I showed yesterday). This started before he joined Timely and probably went on after that. But that is not his earliest work. In a mid war issue of some oversized gag magazine, I also found a single signed cartoon by Hartley. He must have done that while in the armny or while in college, but I couldn't find any evidence of him doing cartoons after that, apart from these Komic Kapers.

From #10:


From #12:



From #13:



He went on even longer than Milt Gross, who stopped his contributions with #17 or 18.

From #19:


Apparently, he drew tthese pages all through the series, because I found a few in some of the later issues as well.

From #50:


From #50:


From #52:


From #54:

The Gross Is always Greener

Friday Comic Book Day.

The response from last week's Milt Gross comics from the Killroys was overwhelming, so here is another one, this time from Killroys #10. Next monday I'll be showing more of his excellent silent book reviews.

Legitimate Ames

Late Thursday Post.

Due to circumstances beyond my control (I forgot), I have not been able to post some stuff yesterday. Wednesday I showed some Sam Spade ads, which are supposed to be by Lou Fine. Here are the first feww days of Fine's late fifties soap strip Adam Ames, so you can see for yourself. I hear some publisher is considering a collection of these. Which one of you would be interested?

Love the announcement. "chronicles the the life of a motherless family, it's problems and it's fun."

A Wild and Crazy Guy

Wednesday Advertising Day.

This week a had bunch of visitors for my collection of 1948 Sam Spade ads I put up some time ago. Here are the ones I have for 1949 and 1950. But that is not all of it. The Sam Spade radio show was a succesful so an dran into 1951. Then it was suddenly stopped and replaced by a similar show with it's own ad series. More on that later. Some of these are named for the month they were in, as it seems this series ran at a frequency of once per month.

Aug 17 1947:


March 1949 (for a color version, follow the tag):


Oct 1949:


Dec 1949:


Jan 1950:


Feb 1950


March 19 1950:


June 1950: