Thursday Story Strip Day.
I am taking a break from Bat Masterson to get the next load with another rarity from the fifties. Before Perry Mason was a television series, he was a popular series of books, most of which were serialized in magazines with loads of gorgeous illustrations. For a short while it was also a newspaper strip. There are three artists for these strips. Mel Keefer got the job fresh out of art school. He has two color samples on his own website. After that it seems a Charles Lofgren drew the strip for some time. He is also mentioned as the illustrator as one of writer Erle Stanly Gardner's books. The third artist was a young Frank Thorne, who later went on to comic book fame for his western strips and later Red Sonja. He did Perry Mason in a junior version of Rip Kirby's Alex Raymond's style. What I seem to have here, is a story by the second artist. I have some of Thorne's as well, but not a complete story such as this. The stories seem to have been told on Sundays as well as dailies, but it reads well in Sundays only as well. There has been one collection of this strip by Malibu. I wouldn't mind to see more.
