Bob Powell is one of my favorite artists of the fifties. He had started out with Will Eisner, struck out with a crew of his own and worked for just about every company except the top ones DC and EC. In the late fifties he started working in Mad imitation magazines, took over the newspaper strip Bat Masterson from Howard Nostrand and did some pulp illustration work. After seven years of doing satire stuff in various black and white styles, he created a new newspaper strip with former romance comic editor Betsy Little. At that point, she was also the editor of the magazine Teen Life, which did photo shoots and articles about the new popular bands (from the Beatles to everyone else). Teena-a-go-go also appeared as a strip in Teen Life and may even have been created for that magazoine first (or at least published there first). A very well drawn soaplike teen strip, Teena-a-go-go benefited from Little knowledge of teen problems and Powells mature style. I have cliped several Sundays over the years (never as much as I would like) and only a few dailies here and there. But they look as if they would be worth seeing more off. Unfortunately, they seem to be impossible to find. And of course, there aren't that many. Soon after Poewell started this strip, he was diagnozed with cancer and the it ran only for a very short time.
So here is what I've got. Maybe someone out there can help me find more.
4 comments:
I'll bet that stripped-to-the-undies catfight raised a few eyebrows in Middle America.
And we don't even get to see the end??
I wish I had more.
This is from the mid 60s, not the 50s, and it's interesting that the heroine is named Teena, since Hilda Terry's very successful comic, Teena,ran in newspapers and comic books until 1966.
Post a Comment