And so a new adventure starts for Scorchy Smith. As it happens it is also the last adventure by George Tuska, who had left the strip earlier that year to do the daily and Sunday version of Buck Rogers. He still kept on doing Scorchy for much longer than most would have done, most probably working on two strips at once for some time. After the first week here he stops signing Scorchy, though. Alan Holtz of the Strippers Guide gives this as Tuska's end date (and the starting date for the next artist, AP regular John Morris. As you can see here, Morris did indeed take over the strip from late July (and continued running it further into the ground for two more years). The last strip here, is the first he signed. But the unsigned strips inbetween are certainly not by Morris and as far as I can see it they are by Tuska. I looked into the possibility that Morris may have inked them or possibly even ghosted them in Tuska's style, but I don't think so. They are rushed and certainly not as good as Tuska's earlier work on the strip. But they seem to me to be wholly by him.
The story itself is an oddity as well. Not only does it pretend Scorchy's last adventure is all a dream, it also seems to dismiss all of his space adventures as dreams and from this point on he turns into a 'normal' detective. The story seems to have been planned like this, with Scorchy filling asleep on a plane. This also coincides with Tuska dropping his signature.
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