I have been doing this blog for almost ten years now, so bear with me if I sometimes repeat myself. But every once in a while I come across a forgotten gem I had not seen before. The co-called action adventure strip Vic Flint was created in the forties as a sort of low rent (and cheaper because it was part of the NEA package) detective strip, by Ralph Lane similar to Dick Tracy, Dan Dunn and Red Barry. In the fifties it was taken over by Dean Miller, who made it even duller than it already was. The daily strip stopped in 1955, but it continued as a Sunday only for another twelve years. The scripting was taken over by Russ Winterbottom - who also wrote the sf newspaper strip Chris Welkin, which was turned into a Sunday only as well and was drawn by Art Sansom, who also drew Vic Flint from 1962 to 1964. In 1964 the artwork was given to John Lane, Ralph's son, who had become the art director at NEA and basicly worked in a cartoon style. With Winterbottom now writing under the pseudonymn of Henry Bond, the strip was given a makeover and a new title, The Good Guys. The two and a half year run of John Lane is remarkable, to say the least. Artisticly it is not only interesting because Lane rendered it in a half satirical and half realistic style that owes more to the political cartoons of that era than any strip I know, but if you look closely you wil see that Lne had a sense of design that rivals that of Alex Toth. NEA was not the syndicate to turn this oddity into a hit, but the small amout of samples I have (given how long it ran), have convinced me that it deserves a second look. If I only knew where to find more.
