After sharing my collection of Jack Sparling's Claire Voyant, here is another large set of realistic strips from the late forties that is largely forgotten. John Spranger had been working as Will Eisner's main assistant on the Spirit asfter the war, but he broke free in 1947/48 to start his own newspaper strip Bodyguard. It was written by cartoonist Lariar, who also wrote The Thropp family for Liberty magazine wit another Eisner refugee, Lou Fine. So he know where to find his talent. A couple of years Lariar was in the news again, as the artist with whom Bill Griffith's mother had a secret affair in his graphic novel Invisible Ink. Bodyguard was an engaging adventure strip, very well drawn by Spranger (certainly better than what Psarling did on Claire Voyant - but then again, he had to do both a daily and a Sunday whereas Bodyguard was only produced Sundays). The strip went through a few name changes, which we'll see if we get further on in the collection. I'll tell you more then.
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Spranger contributed a lot to the look of the post-war SPIRIT. Anyone familiar with the 1946 stories can immediately see Spranger's touches via these BODYGUARD samples. It's nice to see him working without the curtain of another artist's style. It would be nice to have a book collection of these Ben Friday strips... but (a) who would be crazy enough to publish it and (b) would more than 50 people buy a copy?
At least I have some more and into Ben Friday. Then Pfeiffer (sp?) takes over and then there is another name change to The Bantam Prince. All waiting ot be scanned. But I like the earliest one the best.
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