Friday Comic Book Day.
Continuing my fascination with the work of Ray Bailey, here is the first story from Have Gun Will Travel #5, one of two issues he drew for Dell. One of the things that interest me, is the fact that he never drew anything in another style than this Caniff-derived stuff. Okay, he had a few touche of his own, like the overly dramatic close-up faces and the sunburst patter he used for all sorts of things, but unlike all other Caniff assistants and followers, he never changed his style when public demand or wise old age would sugest that. All the others, like Lee Elias, Bill Overgard, Mel Graff and Frank Robins eventually did. But if you are looking at Bailey you never knwo where Caniff ens and the artist himself takes over...
4 comments:
A pretty good job from Mr. Bailey, much better than the story.
It's no secret that I'm not a big Paul S. Newman fan. Even so his scripts were seldom this clumsy. The awkward setup (photographer insists on taking risky photo of an Indian he didn't really want to photograph in the first place) and all the fol-de-rol with the bandits and the switched photos seems like an early draft needing another rewrite.
Page 6 panel 3 shows the perils of drawing from stills. Obviously the reference Bailey had for Richard Boone were smiling head shots; this drawing looks like Boone but the smile is strange in the context of the story. I had this problem all the time on Dallas, but Bailey drew a helluva lot better Richard Boone than I did a Larry Hagman.
Yes, but there probably aren't ANY pictures of Larry Hagman not smilig around, while there must have been some for Richard Boone.
Ger, just caught up on you Ray Bailey material. Here's a bit of info that I don't think anyone knows. In 1947 and possibly into early 1948, Pete Tumlinson was Ray Baily's assistant. He kept the job until his hiring to the Timely staff in 1948. By process of elimination, I'd guess this means the Bruce Gentry strip as Tummy had just arrived from Texas and westerns were in his blood. Made him a natural for Kid Colt!
Doc V.
Doc, great info... but Bruce Gentry was not a western strip. It was a Steve Canyon type strip which is supposed to be set in South America (although I can't see it). So I guess Tumlinson was Bailey's background assistant, which would be ironic as Bailey himself started out doing backgrounds for Caniff. It would fit with my personal felling that the backgrounds on Tumlinsons early work are just gorgeous.
Post a Comment