Thursday Story Strip Day.
Tomorrow I will be showing some more of Frank Giacioa's work for Ziff-Davis. I ecided that would be a good moment to share with you the samples I have of Giacioa's third newspaper strip. In the midfifties he did a splendid run on Sherlock Holmes, which was only marred by the repetitive writing (that even got worse towards the end, with dailies almost completely repeating the information in the Sundays - and often te drawings as well). After that he did a great Sunday only, which I have shown here. The first two years were in the Prince Valiant style with text underneath and often drawn magnificently. The later years have 'normal' dialogue and although less spectacular, still pretty well drawn. His third strip, Thorn McBride started in September 1960. It is daily only and less high reaching as his previous efforts. In fact, although a case could me made for the idea that Giacioa was one of the architects of the DC house style, it sort of looks like second rate DC. Which still makes it pretty good, actually. Since I only realized yesterday I was going to show these, i had to run and collect as many consecutive dailies as I could. I had been holding back on this strip partly because of the poor quality of the scans I could find, but in going back I ran across a paper with excellent scans and I have clipped as many of them as I could manage. I guess I have to go back and collect the rest of the storyline as well, now.
Frank Giacioa's run on Thorn McBride didn't last very long. I think he did about two storylines, lasting until march 1961. After that Mel Keefer continued the strip for another year. He did quite well, but couldn't manage to bring some life into it.
1 comment:
Frank Giacoia's last signed strip is from January 21, 1961. Mel Keefer starts signing with the next one on January 23, 1961.
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