Friday, August 31, 2012

White Man Heap Interested

Friday Comic Book Day.

Roy Thomas has been contracted to produce a series of comic book reprints for PS Art Books. After their succesful run reprinting of the Harvey Horror titles they are branching out to ACG horror and Hillman's The Heap. From the ads, I can't really see what the contents of these books will be and you must see for yourself what you want to order and where. But even it is only Heap stories, there will be a lot to enjoy. The character is great, the stories aren't too bad and the art is by the best the early fifties had to offer in realistic artists influenced by Milt Caniff. Here is a samplong from the fifth series of Airboy Comics, which is where the Heap had his own regular spot. I had always thought Ernie Schroeder was the Heap artist and as good as he is, after a couple of stories I fall asleep. But there is a lot more to be found. In my samples alone, you'll find Carmine Infantino, Leonard Starr and Mike Roy - who all wet on to bigger and better things (or had them behind them).

































































More tomorrow. Have to go to bed now.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Loup of Faith

Thursday Story Strip Day.

One of the best things abour Alan Holtz' new encyclopedia American Newspaper Comics is the fact that I can now put a few odds and end in my collection to rest. Sea Hounds was a shortrun realistic strip by Fran Striker and Jon Blummer. It ran from october 1944 to june 1946. I think what I have here are not the earliest strips at the front and the last few at the back. BLummer is best known for creating DC's Hop Harrigan, which according to Holtz also was an even shorter running newspaper strip in 1942. He further assisted Striker on The Lone Ranger in the same years as he did Sea Hound.

I was alerted to this strip when the guys from the Lambiek site asked me if I could identify a French version of the january 1945 strip. The French title 'loup de la mer' also took me to the 1941 movie Sea Wolf which seems to have been the inspiration to the strip.












A one day gap here.


This one is bigger - almost a whole year. WE go right to the last week.