Thursday, July 31, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Fifteen

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Fourteen

Wednesday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

A gentry Summer, Thirteen

Tuesday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.

Monday, July 28, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Twelve

Monday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.


Sunday, July 27, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Eleven

Sunday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Ten

Saturday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.

Friday, July 25, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Nine

Firday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.


Thursday, July 24, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Eight

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Seven

Wednesday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Six

Tuesday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of the first Bruce Gentry story from 1945.

Monday, July 21, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Five

Monday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.


Sunday, July 20, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Four

Sunday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

A Gentry Summer, three

Saturday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.

Friday, July 18, 2014

A Gentry Summer, Two

Friday Story Strip Day.

Continuing my run of Bruce Gentry's first story from 1945.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

A Gentry Summer

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Recently I aquired a huge selection os early Bruce Gentry strips by Ray Bailey. My love for this artist is known and I am not alone there. Not ony are these posts well visited, but it is also getting harder each year to get teasheets on ebay or at sellers, because I am no longer the only one buying them. If you are one of these collectors and you can provide me with scnas, I will trade whatever I have scanned in for news ones -or you could donate scans directly.

I was hesitating about sowing all of those pages here, because they are a huge part of the book I am trying to sell about all the Milt Caniff assistants and imitators. Stil, there are more than enough stories to choose from, so I will start with these early ones and we'll see. And by the way, if I ever do a book, I wil need the dailies as well since Bruce Gentry was one of those strips that had a continuing storyline from the Sundays to the week.

It is also my holiday offering. For the next two weeks I want something easy, so I ma doing a page a day. You can visit daily or drop by every now and then to follow the story. I do not have every Sunday for 1945, but I am getting close.

We start with a couple of black and white ones, to get into the story.


And my first color page.




Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Extra Rice

Wednesday Illustration Day.

Pierce Rice was a highly talented early comic book artist (and activist). If you want to know more about him after reading this piece, I suggest you visit his obituary at The Comics Reporter in 2003: http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/resources/longbox/59/. As the Labieks Comiclopedia puts it: "He worked for Fox Comics, Fawcett and Centaur, but mainly for Harvey, dong features like 'Zebra', 'Green Hornet', 'Captain Freedom' and 'Black Cat'. Rice was drafted in the US Army in 1943, where he served in World War II's European theater and drew for the Seventh Army Newspaper in Heidelberg. Back in civil life, Rice began work at DC, where he contributed art to such features as 'Spectre', 'Crimson Avenger', 'Manhunter', 'Slam Bradley' and 'Seven Soldiers of Victory'. Other post-War clients were Hillman, Harvey, Ace, Standard, Gleason, Ziff-Davis, ACG, Eastern and Topps. In the ffties Pierce Rice left comics, to pursued magazine cover illustration, portraiture and various design projects. He also became a renown art critic and teacher at the University of Pennsylvania."

But before that, he also went on some sort of goodwill tour for the army, or visited veterans hospitals where he did portraits of soldiers. I bought these photo's from ebay, where the seller mentioned that they were made in the late forties or early fifties, but made no mention of the comic book connection. They are a remarkable addition to what we already know about the talented and politicly active (he participated in Bernie Krigstein's efforts to create a comic book artists union) early comic book great.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Let's Go Down

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

When I started this blog, I shared a lot of daily and Sunday samples as I could of Howie Schneider's excellent Bimbo's Circus strip. Why this never became a hit I don't know. Maybe the characters were too sarcastic (although B.C and Wizard of Id weren't happy campers either)? To my surprise i see it's been a while. Thankfully I got a lot of new samples, starting with this early daily run and introduction.