Ever since I bought the Big Bolt Collection from Classic Comics Press I have been a fan of Big Ben Bolt. It is impressively drawn, but somehw I could never get into it. But when I read the whole book, I was drawn in by the terrific storylines. Unfortunately the books seems not to have sold well enough for a quick follow up, which means a (color) Sunday book is out of the question as well. Big Ben Bolt was one of those srips that had a seperate Sunday and daily storyline. Since I then I have been collecting and scanning Big Ben Bolt Sundays, but since the story is so important I am not very keen on showing incomplete runs. So I was very glad to run into an online paper that had the Big Ben Bolt Sundays almost from the start - and for most of the fifties they orinted them in black and white as well. Since Big Ben was colored very well, most of the online (microfiche) sources were blotchy and dark. But this one just has the linework without the coloring, so it is a lot better to read. well, in theory, because when I went back to the earliest samples, it tturned out the camera was set a bit dark and there is a lot of unneccesary grey i these scans. Maybe soo I will try and see if some of that can't be removed. But for now, at least you can read them,
By the way, I am not quite sure if this run starts at the earliest Sunday. At least it is the earliest in this paper.
2 comments:
First Sunday was May 25 1952.
Big Ben Bolt in the 50's was great. Afterwards it became more conventional. The thing is, how many boxing fights can there be before the you get bored of seeing fights all the time? I liked the dailies more than the Sundays, and at times Ben turned detective and journalist, among other things, to keep the strip interesting.
Strips with sport themes are difficult to keep interesting on a daily basis.
The same thing happened to "Gunner" by Jose Luis Salinas, though beutifully drawn, was annoying to read (a football match would last a week or so, if you followed the continuity). And he too, would be a detective at times. Needless to say, this strip didn't last much, contrary to Ben Bolt that lasted for a loooong while, though at the end it was ghosted entirely by Carlos Garzón, a colombian artist who had been an assistant to Al Williamson.
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