Friday, April 22, 2011

The Chicago Mob

Thursday Newspaper Story Day.

Today not much to read, but what I have to share is quite rare. I am a big fan of the work of Ray Bailey, who is said to have worked as an assistant for Milt Caniff on Terry and the Pirates and Male Call. In the late fifties he did Bruce Gentry and later Tom Corbett on his own, but still very much in the Caniff style. His first newspaper strip was called Vista West and was created for the CHicago Tribune. I believe it was only done as a Sunday. Is there anyone who can help me out on this? I did find an original online in a different format, but with a bit of cutting and repositioning, it could fit the same format. From the Lambiek website comes yet another sample of this strip, but that's it for me.

I have added however, two other rare strips from the Chicago Sunday Comic Book. The first is Mr. Ex, a rarely seen strip by Bert Whitman, who is best known for his strip Debbie Dean. After that a comic strip by someone who is better known for his lettering. Farnk Engli was the house letterer for Milton Caniff and assorted strips from the same 'school'. His caveman strip Rocky is fun to see and suprisingly well drawn. I should get more of these Chicago Comic Books...








3 comments:

fortunato said...

For what I know, VESTA WEST AND HER HORSE "TRAVELER" was a Sunday only feature.

It was by Fred Meagher (August 30 to October 4 1942), that was replaced by Ray Bailey (from October 11 1942 on).

Probably, VW ended on September 19 1943.

Ger Apeldoorn said...

I had understand that Bailey started it and Maegher was only on it for s whie, but this makes more sense. Where did you get those dates? I wish the Strippers Guide would come out, Alan says maybe this year.

fortunato said...

From someone that examined the Sunday Boston Post (in the Chicago Tribune Vesta ended earlier).