Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The Things I See

Wednesday Illustration Day.

In the same batch of new online newspapers that got me Patsy in Hollywood, I also found a nice long run of Hank Barrow's Things To Come. Not only is it a delightful feature, but Barrow is one of the most unjustly forgotten artists from the AP stable. We know about Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles, we know Mel Graff worked there, we know Al Capp but may not know he worked there too and then there are one or two who went into illustration and made name for themselves. And some fans know about Morris, who is the most mediocer of them all, doing half hearted political cartoons all through the forties and fifties and ending up running Scorchy Smith in the ground in the early sixties. But Hank Barrow is never mentioned (except here of course, as we are the home of the unchampioned causes). I have shown some of his illustration work from the fifties, his work on the nostalgic panel he too over from Milt Caniff in the thirties and forties, his polical cartoons and of course his one outing that com nearest to a comic strip, the Sunday panel Things to Come. Like Closer Than You Think by Charles Radenbaugh it takes modern science to predict sociological and technological developments in our future. Unlike Closer Than You Think, it sometimes gets them right as well. But the best thing about it is Barrow funfilled art style. You can clearly see he came from the same background as Caniff, but he has his own take on the lush inklines, a cartoony wink added to the realism that make him a favorite of mine.

Like yesterday, I am reshowing a color Sunday from an earlier post to go along with the new, flawed black and white scans. But what fun they are..!





1 comment:

Pieter Hogenbirk said...

Hoei, lekker zeg!