Sunday Double D Day.
Some years ago I collected a whole lot of Sunday strips from the Midland Reporter Telegram. The MRT was a NEA paper, which means that they had all of the lesser known and lesser distributed strips from that syndicate and the AP outfit, some of my favorites (and all very hard to find). Unfortunately the mico-fiche scans were very bad, ranging from way too dark to far too light. Cleaning out my files, I decided to share them anyway for the unseen gems that may be among them.
Much like Scorchy Smith NEA's avdenture strip Dickie Dare is mostly remembered for it's first artists. Dickie Dare was started in 1933 by Milton Caniff. When he left in December 1934 to start his own strip Terry and the Pirates, the strip was given to Coulton Waugh, who continued it in a similar but very ideosyncratic style, for which he was very well known. It helped of course, that he wrote one of the first books about newspaper comics, The Comics (1947). In 1944, when he left the strip to work on Hank (1945), his wife and assistant, Odin Burvik, took over Dickie Dare in 1944–47, followed by Fran Matera (1948–49). Waugh eventually returned to the strip in 1950–58 with the 12-year-old Dickie growing up to become a Navy Cadet. And like Goode and Willard, Burvik and Metera were almost ignored for their contributions.
Fran Matera was the very difinition of a journeyman artist. A few years ago I bough a set of late forties samples he did to get new work (probably after Waugh returned) and it showed he could do any style needed. After a meeting with Kerry Drake artist Alfred Andriola (and doing some ghost work for him), he shortly worked in comics before getting Dickie Dare. He mostly worked in a cheap and easy Milt Caniff style, which shows in his work for Dickie Dare, his short-lived strip Mr. Holiday and his ghosting jobs for Nero Wolfe (1956), Rex Morgan MD, Judge Parker and Appartment #G. He also drew the short-lived The Legend of Bruce Lee and took over the drawing (and later even writing) of Steve Roper and Nomad in 1985. In between all of this he did short stories and series for the Catholic Treasure Chest magazine.
1 comment:
Thanks for posting Dickie and Scorchy. Could Oaky Doaks be next? I believe that you have NEA confused with AP. These three strips appeared in my hometown Associated Press newspaper in Massachusetts and were favorites of mine as a young boy in the late forties through 1955. The earliest artist that I remember on Scorchy was Rodlow Willard and to this day I still like his stuff and Edmond Goode as well. I think that both these artists got a bad shake in very biased opinion reviews by Bill Blackbeard. I have seen Hollingsworth Scorchy strips reprinted or posted in recent years but don't recall seeing his work when I was a boy. The last two artists on Scorchy were John Tuska and John Milt Morris (an AP political cartoonist). I had plans for doing a feature on Scorchy for the unpublished third issue of my 1959 ditto fanzine SQUATRONT (one word). I had contacted Morris in hopes of getting more information and perhaps some syndicate promotional materials for my essay on the strip. I got a very nice, lengthy reply from Morris, but unfortunately, he was only able to offer a retelling of what Coulton Waugh had provided in his book The Comics.
Post a Comment