Clean Teens

Thursday Story Strip Day.

In 1967 Bob Powell dies after a long and succesful career in comics, which strted with Will Eisner in the late thirties and included his own studio in the late forties and early sixties and numerous very destinctly draw comics for many companies, including Harvey and Atlas. A true master of the form, he seems to have disappeared from comics after the late fifties, first taking over the Bat Masterton newspaper strip from Howard Nostrand (which I have shown here) and then settling in as one of the resident artists of the satirical magazine Sick (when it was tryong not to be a Mad imitation). For some reason these last years of his career have remained mostly unknown among fans. After Sick was bought by a new owner and decided to become more and more like a cheap knockoff of Mad, Powell left and went back to comics. he drew an issue of Archie's Madhouse and strated newspaper strip and monthly comic strip serial with teen magazine editor Bessy Little called Teena-A-Go-Go. From what I have seen it was as beautifully drawn as anything Powell did and even though it was not a succes, I am sure Powell would have gone on to greater heights and have been remembered better had he not died of cancer. I have never heard of anyone who had a complete set of Sundays and dailies of Teena, but last month I did come across a complete online set of the daily episodes of the whole of Teena's half year of existance... well, almost. Coevering the whole period, the set I came across only had the Saturday edition of that particular paper. I found another paper carrying the strip, but there also a large portion of the dailies was not represented. Still, together with the Sundays I showed earlier, they do give a good impression of this unjustly forgotten teen soaper.