The Fabuleous Fifties

Back When Bruce Was Still A Man's Name

Thursday Story Strip Day.

One of the adventure strips I would love to see reprinted, is Bruce Gentry by Ray Bailey. Bailey had been Milt Caniff's assistant in the early forties on Terry and the Piates. In 1945 he started his own adventure strip, completely in the Caniff style. If anything, it looked most like Caniff's own new strip Steve Canyon, which would not start until a year later. Despite of the headstart, Canyon was a much bigger succes. I guess the size of the syndicate, the lack of creator name or promotional push was just as much to blame as the fact that the stories were just that little bit less exciting.

Now I have said all this before and shown some selected months of the 6 year running strip, but they have gotten very little attention here. no links, no extra visitors, very little response. So I may be the only Ray Bailey fan out there. But another factor can be that I was never able to do whole stores and the quality of my microfiche converted scans is pretty bad on these realistic strips.

So here is a whole story, which I scanned myself from a clipped set. I can even include one of the two Sundays I have. Bruce Gentry ran with one storyline on weekdays and weekends (just like Terry and Canyon) and the fact that these Sundays are even harder to get then the dailies makes it very unlikely a book will be forthcoming soon. But at least you have me.

Februari first was missing, so that should go before the last one:

Just a couple more missing, but here is what I could find online:

Of course, the Sunday comes after the first daily of the three above:

And that's where my run ends... but I couldn't leave you without the dramatic ending.