Thursday story strip day.
Last friday I showed one of the few issues Neal Adams did for the later run of DC's Bob Hope Adventures. Before Adams took over this series it was drawn for a long time by Bob Oksner. I will try and show one of those tomorrow. Today I have a large and very impressive sampling of Oksner's comic strip in the forties, Cairo Jones. Like George Roussos' Judge Wright (which I have shown earlier) this was not a major series for any of the major papers. Oksner earned his money inking (and sometimes pencilling) for many DC titles. It is one of many samples that show that having a newspaper strip doesn't always mean you've got it made. Cairo Jones was good enough, but it was hampered by low poduction values, including a fairly horrific coloring. The first Sunday I could find was for October the 28th 1945, which menas the strip probably started on October the 22nd.
I had meant to show more of the color samples, but the ones I have are for later in the two year run and I chose to do a longer complete run (albeit only in Sundays). I have included one color page, to show the ba coloring. And since it is included in a three tier black and white version as well, you can see for yourself how the strip was cut up for smaller formats. Bob Oksner later gained respect and a lot of succes by drawing pretty ladies. I have already shown his Lucille Ball strip, but he also did several girl humor strips for DC in the fifties and the silly soap Soozi in the late sixties. They'll all get their day here, but maybe this is a good start.
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