Wrestling With Fame

Saturday Leftover Day. A Year ago, I bought a long run of the forgotten newspaper strip from the late forties in another lot. Tex Austin was the creation of artist Tom Fanning and writer Sam Robins. If I understand it right, it was thought up by Fanning and Robert Hall from the Hall Syndicate (which also launched Pogo) as a cross between an western and a boxer strip and wester B-movie writer Sam Robins was ased to join the team. The main hero, Tex Austin, seems to have been based on a real rodeo star from the twenties, but adopted to be more contemporary. I have an almost complete run of Sundays from this feature, from the second Sunday in April to the last 1949 episode. The strip itself ran until April 1950, when it was suddenly cut short. The daily papers on Monday April 11 stated that the strip was delayed in the post, but infact it mever returned. This week I have put all of these Sundays on Ebay (https://www.ebay.com/sch/gerapeldoorn/m.html?item=154192490512&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562). I spread them out individually, so you can see how cheaper they are than the $6/$10 some other sellers want foreach seperate sheet. Of course, duw to the postage from Holland, I think it would be best if you got them all (or at least a sizeable portion). For today's post I went online to try and find the dailies that go with this strip, or ate least some of them. I also found two introduction pieces, which are the source of what little is know about this strip and it's makers. Sadly, one bit of information is missing. From October 16, the Sundays are credited to a John Mayo (rather than Tom Fanning), although the dailies remain in his name (the Christmas daily is even signed in the strip itself). The style remained the same - in fact, the biggest change in style was mich earlier, in May or so, when Fanning seems to have changed to a new inker. Maybe Mayo joined the team there already. If this John Mayo is the same artist as the later comic book artist Ralph Mayo is unknown. Here are the dailies I found and some of the Sundays. I will clean the others as well and add them at a later date. 

Here are the first two weeks from microfiche, plus my first Sunday uncleaned:

This the week before John Mayo took over the Sunday and the week after:

Here you can see the Christmas daily signed by Fanning:

One of the later dailies, still in the same style: