Thursday Story Strip Day.
Some Time ago, I shared with you a couple of poor copies from Frank Frazetta's adventure strip from the early fifties, Johnny Comet. It ran for about a year and near the end it changed writers and seems to have been changed into a gag strip, or at least the Sundays were. After having shown a couple of samples I started collecting a couple more, but I stopped doing that when it was announced that vanguard Publishing would bring out a new 'complete' collection. The collection is due in stores any minute now, so I wrote them to ask if the new collection would include the second incarnation of the strip, which sometimes went under the name of Ace McCoy. They told me it did and added that this wil also be the first time that the whole of the strip is shot from the stats from Frazetta's own archives, promising a visual feast from the eye. I have not yet seen the actual bok, but what I have from Vanguard is always extremely well produced. So I am expecting good things from it (even though I don't always care for their choice of glossy paper - which doesn't mean they will do so again with this book). They also asked me not to show too much of the strip in an online showcas such as this, but frankly I believe that the poor quality of these scans from the micro-fiche files of NewspaperArchive will only make the fans want the book even more. Imagine you could be able to see every line in these strips...! To show what that would look like, I have added two of the many originals that can be found on the web as well. I am not the Frazetta idolate that some collectors seem to be, but I do recognize quality when I see it.
If you have a particulary well-stocked comic book store, you can try and order it there. Otherwise you can go to Amazon or the online store of your favor, or get it through the Vanguard website at: http://www.vanguardproductions.net/Comet/index
1 comment:
From what I understand, Peter DePaolo, a well known auto racer of the era, had nothing to do with the strip other than lending his name to it. The syndicate figured that it would lend credibility to a strip about an auto racer. Same reason that "Hap Hopper," Jack Sparling's strip about a Washington correspondent, was originally credited to Drew Pearson and Robert Allen, writers of the "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column.
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