Saturday Leftover Day.
I recently scanned in a rare Comc Ad by Mel Graff. Graff was best know as the artist of the long running strip Secret Agent X-9 in it's middle years. But amon collector he is much more admired for his stint as the first artist of the adventure strip Patsy, which he drew in a spot on Noel Sickles imitation. So much so, that many peoplefeel Sickles must have helped him, although I have never seen evidence of that. Graff's successor Charles Raab did use Sickles help now and then, but Graff to me has always seemd his own man. Before strarting Patsy, he worked at Associated Press as a staff artist, following in Sickles and Milt Caniff;s footsteps. Very little of his work from that peirod is known and using this ad, gives me a chance to show what I found.
Apart from the storyillustration he did (which I showed a year ago or so), he also did spot illustrations (incuding caricatures) for a political gossip feature called Washington of the Record. I looked as hard as I could, but I still may have missed someting, but it seems he did so only between September 1934 and februari 1934, with no samples in october.
1 comment:
In the early days Graff seemed to epitomize the jack-of-all-trades freelancer. I've read many how-to books from the period that stress the importance of versatility, especially for the artist just breaking in. That was Mel!
The Dr. Lyon's ad was a sweet surprise. I thought the good Doctor was strictly in Frank Robbins' territory.
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