Saturday, June 21, 2014

Best of The Vest

Saturday Musings.

Great sale on ebay. A Swiss seller who has a taste similar to mine was selling Dawn O'Day, Captain Easy by Walt Scott, the Chicago Comic Book with Rocky, Cairo Jones and Vesta West by Ray Bailey. And not just a few, whole runs and whole years. Now I dont know if I did this myself by writing about these strips (and others) on my log so much, but the prices on his stuff can go pretty high. In the end I had to skip te Cairo Jones (which was getting steep prices) and the Chicago Comic Book to get Dawn O'Day and Vesta West. I also outbid my nemesis on these lots for two complete years of Captain Easy. I hope it wasn't one of my regulars. They still have to arrive, but they wil b added to my new to scan pile.



2 comments:

Diego Cordoba said...

What do you do with all this material, Ger? Besides showing them on your blog, that is... The Vesta West series is good enough to publish as a book, even if you can't get the complete run...

I don't find it necessary to publish the complete run of most strips. More often than not, the first months or years aren't very good, and it's only later on that it gets really good. And sometimes it's the opposite, as with Prince Valiant that started really good, and by the late 50's till the end of Foster's run its not as good (and the work done by most of his assistants)...

Ger Apeldoorn said...

I have mentione here a couple of time that I am actively shopping book called The School of Rembrand with a huge illustrated article on all the comic strip artists taht were influenced by Milton Caniff (The Rembrand of Comic Art) and samples of a at least one story of every one of his newspaper strip imitators. And to repeat a comment I gave earlier when someone asked: even though almost every American artist in the fifties and sixties was influenced by Caniff in some way, there are more than enough to fill a book who worked in style completely close to him. Some were assistants (Ray Bailey), some got their job through Caniff's interference (Bill Overgard) and some even were helped by him (Charles Raab). Ray Bailey may be the only one who will be present wth three runs: Vesta West (I just got a whole year's worth), Bruce Gentry (I have a lot of new Sundays but will need dailies to complete the shared storyline) and Tom Corbett. I am still wondering if I shoudl share the scans here or save them for the book.