More Scorchy

Saturday Leftover Day.

Last Thursday I told you about George Tuska 'lost' Sunday strip Scorchy Smith. All I have ever see from those are black and white scans taken from microfiche copies. Blog friend Smurfwhacker suggested the reason the Sundays from this strip are so scarce because syndicate AP's client list mostly consisted of small town papers that did not have a Sunday. I have shown as many of the Sundays as I could find in a readable state (the microfiche process did not always translated the darker colors very well). Going back through the link (which I suggest you do too), I found I have not done the last few months of the strip, probably because so few of them were usable. But here are the last two I have, very near the end of Tuska's run on the Sundays - although he did continue the dialy for another two years. I suspect that there may even be some Pete Morisi ining on the second one? Morisi was a friend and sometimes studio mate of Tuska, whose style was influenced by him - and possibly the other way around as well.

Ffinding Llewelyn

Friday Comic Book Day.

Last year I have started a new strip with Dutch realistic artist Fred de Heij. I have always admired his art, which ranges from the satirical to pulpy to historical realism. He is particulary good at facial and body expressions, making him perfect for my scenarios (which show evidence of the fact that I am primarily a tv and stage writer). The new series we are going to do is a 'remake' of an older series form the seventies, which was done for the Dutch weekly Pep, but abandonned after thre episodes because the artist wasn't happy to be confined to the comic page. This artist, by the, evolved into one of the prime political, satirical and erotic cartoonists of the Netherlands, whose work deserves a wider audience. I have always admired the concept of this series, which can be described as a cross between the television series Ripper Street and Fringe. The hero of the story, Llewelyn Fflint is a librarian at the National History Museum in London in 1963 (a couple of years before Jack the Ripper, so he won't be appearing) I wrote the strip in English and am now translating it into Dutch to be lettered. But we did a half page to try out the right letter, so here it is. The full series will be in the new quarterly Strip Glossy with a 12 page episode every three months.

Hen's Teeth

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Last week I showed some of Charles Raab's daily strips of Ap's Patsy in Hollywood (which had been started by Mel Graff). In the late forties the strip was taken over by Bill Dyer, who used a far less serious style and has been ignored by the comic hostorians for not being Graff, Raab or Sickles. As I have shown before with the Sundays I colected and scanned, his verson of the kid's adventure strip actually worked quite well and it is no surprise it ran until well in the the fifties. For some reason there Sundays from some AP strips are ultra rare. Frank Robbins' Scorchy Smith is impossible to find and if you do they are very expensive. Likewise, the Bill Dyer Patsy Sundays are not easy to come by (thogh cheaper). Four of these have Scorchy Smith Sundays by A. C. Hollingsworth on the back, a rare treat. The Sundays from his predessor Edmund Good are a bit more common (and they were reprinte din one of the comic book series that used newspaper strips). But the most uncommon strip must have been George Tuska's Scorchy Smith Sundays. When I was ooking for microfiche copies of his daily version, believing he had never done Sundays, I found to my surprise he dis actuallt do two years of them, following Hollingsworth, stopping about two years agao before the daily stopped. SInce finding microfiche copies of those, I have actively looked for and never found any actual dailies in color.

A Real Powerhouse

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Early in his career as a commercial cartoonist, Dik Browne produced the Roger Wilco ad series for Powerhouse candy bars. The later Sundays he was even allowed to sign them. But there was also a daily run, some of which I may have shown before. They were used once a week and I just accidentally ran across them.