Smart Ass

Monday Cartoon Day.

Two weeks ago, when he linked to a Jery Robinson post on my blog, frequent visitor Stephen DeStephano remarked that he knew the artist who started as Bob Kane's asssistant on Batman (and co-inventor of The Joker, at least), Mort Meskin inker and collaborator in the late forties, Steve Ditko and others' art teacher in the early fifties, Timely artist, Jet scott artist, illustrator and writer of the best book on newspaper comics of his day as the artist on the silly and weirdly drawn Sunday Feature Classroom Flubs and Fluffs, which lllustrated goofs and bloopers from the classroom, which were sent in by the readers and which was published in the seventies. I have quite a few of those, all waiting to be scanned in, but here is one I did earlier. Together with an article on his other, slightly earlier daily panel Still Life, in which inanimate objects commented on the daily news and political scene. I have never managed to come across a longer run o those but I sure would like to see them. It seems like Mr. Robinson was the typical New York Liberal Jew Randy Newman sings about in his song Rednecks. My kind of guy.

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I Am Leaving On A Scott Plane

Thursday Story Strip Day.

One of the first strips I looked for when I got NewspaperArchive, is the mid fifties astronaut trip Jet scott by writer Sheldon Stark and artist Jerry Robinson. I have been intrigued with this strip ever since I saw one single daily in Robinson's recently republished book on comics strips from the seventies (the book, not the strips). Unfortunately, I didn't find anything but a poorly reproduced set of dailies and some Sundays that had serious problems with the Sunday colors. So you can imagine my joy at reading the fact that Dark Horse would be publishing the whole strip in black and white and color in two volumes this year. The first volume is just out and due to the Iceland vulcano crisis I am still waiting for it. But since I am already a day late and have to assemble a post in a hurry, I thought it would be a good moment to dump my assorted Jet Scott scans here. If you like them, or if like me you are a fan of 50's adventure strips or Jerry Robinson, have a ook at Amazon and maybe order the books. And if you do, let's all do it on Sunday. I would like nothing more than to see the sales of the book spike for one day due to traffic from my blog readers...

I have skipped the dailies altogether. Those interested can follow the tag to see some of the earlier ones, but they are reprinted much nicer in the first book. But I did have a nice concentrated run of Sundays from the later period. Those will probably be in the second book, but in color. To see what the colors of this strip looked like, I have two earlier Sundays, both out of sequence.

In A Future Not To Long Ago

Saturday Leftover Day.

Here are some more stray episodes of Jet Scott. There are some gaps, but I have put them in the right order and they are all from the sequence before the one I showed this week. I am still looking forward anxiously to the official announcement of the complete collection.

Nov 15 1953:

Arabian Knight

Tuesday Newspaper Story Day.

So here I was quietly gathering long runs of Jet Scott to share with you, when about a Month ago a mail went through several Yahoo groups saying that a major publisher was planning to bring out a complete collection of this forgotten strip with the full cooperation of artist Jerry Robinson. Over the next period I will share whatever bits and pieces I have, but for more of the story you will have to wait until the collection comes out and get it.

Jerry Robinson was a major comic book artist in the forties. In the fifties he tough evening classes at the New York School of Viual Art, effectively training a whole new generation of name comic creators. After that he started Jet scott. I have show the first two weeks and some of my other Sundays earlier, but here is a short run form februari 1954. The first Sunday is supposed to be the one for Feb 14th, but it doesn't seem to fit. Maybe I mislabeled it while scanning. I am showing it firsdt, so you can see for yourself. After that is the next two Sundays and the dailies between those.

Here's To You,Mr. Robinson...

Thusday Newspaper strip day.

Most of the stips and cartoons I show here are series or titles I would love to seen collected. I show what I have got, hoping to evoke some sort of reaction from reader s and/or publishers until maybe someday one will stick. High on my list of strip I would love to have in book form is Jerry Robinson's Jet Scott. Robinson is best known for two things... his work in the forties as artist on the early Batman stories and possible the co-creator of the Joker. He was one on a team for artists working directly for Bob Kane. Others included Geoge Roussos who was mentioned here earlier.The people at Dc noticed that Bob Kane was using assistants, but they didn't ask questions. In de late forties Robinson teamed up with Mort Meskin and together they produced a small but impressive amount of comic book stories, turning themin one of the most famous comic book teams. They both continued doing solo work as well, but their styles blended so well togethe that it is very hard to tell who did what in their collaborarions. Their work together looks like a hyper version of either man's art.

In the early forties Robinson took a job as a teacher at the New York School of Visual Arts night classes. As such he tough a new generation of artists, including Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, Steve Ditko and Marie Severin. He also free-laced sollo work for Stan Lee at Timely/Atlas. I think he did the most impressive work of his career in the stories he did for Lee in this period and for a short period in the midfifties. This work is very rarely seen or mentioned. He is better remembered for his work as a political cartoonist. In the early sixties he also did a cartoonish panel illustrated real life flubs sent in by readers. I will show some of those later, since I believe the career of Mr. Robinson is very much worth spotlighting. From 1953 to 1955 he laso did a slightly diappointing adventure strip called Jet Scott for the Herald Tribune. The Tribune had a lot ofexciting strips thye falied to sell outside of their own pages. Most of those were ultimately doomed. Jet Scott told the adventures of a CIA agent in the near future, making it only barely a science fiction strip. It fit in with the interest of that period in realistic space travel. Unfortunately, from what I have seen neither the stories not the art were very exciting.

Still, I have always been interested in this strip, ever since I saw just one tier of it in Mr. Robinson's mid-seventies book on comic strips. This excellent book (that did not skip the fifties as so many of he historians do) has recently been reprinted and I can recommend it to everyone. The first version had an immense impact on me. The quality is poor, but at least you can follow the story.

So here's the first few weeks of the daily version. Apparently the sunday version started right along with it. The paper I took these barely readable strips from didn't carry it every a sunday (and the one I have is pretty blurry), but I also do have the fourth sunday in color from another source, A solid scan, too.

I hope you'll agree Mr. Robinsn is a remarkable artist who deserves more credit than he has been getting.

As an introduction I alo have the announcement piece in the paper from the week before the strip started.