Kid's Stuff

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

One of the most appreciated strips in Boy's Life was Dik Browne's Tracy Twins. The strip appeared somewhere in 1953 and seems to have been based on Browne's succesful advertising series The Trouble Twins. In an earlier post, I showed you the first few years of this strip. If you follow the tag, you can (re)visit this post. Today, I put the spotlight to the later years of the strip, starting from 1960. I hope at some point to be able to conclude the run by clipping the middle years.

I have always been intrigued by the question how much Gill Fox and Dik Browne worked togethr on these and other strips. I believe Gill Fox has mentioned working on the Tracy Twins, but he didn't specify the period. As far as I can see, he did the strips for february, april, june, august and october 1961 and probably some in 1960 as well. It seems to be Browne and Fox didn't worked together on those strips, but alternated. The stiff male figures are a giveaway for Fox's style. The woolliness of the extras and anything in the background look like pure Browne to me. In late 1961 Fox took over the daily panel Side Glances, so it isn't unimaginable the collaboration ended there.

Open the Gates

Monday Cartoon Day.

I have shown cartoons and serieus work by Art Gates. Here is some of his work for Boy's Life in the early sixties. The career round-up or ad was on my disc, but I am not sure where I got it. and it has Gill Fox as well.

Caniffy

Sunday Comic Book Extra.

Here's a story I picked from Ace's Hand of Fate #9. It's from 1951 and I think it is remarkable. The staging, the figures, the inking are all very well done. This is either a fluke or a very competent comic artist. But alas, there is no name.

The figure work and design reminds me of the work of Fred Kida. Kida had done a lot of work on Gleason's crime titles and would go on to do some remarkable stuff for Stan Lee, before settling in a bland all-Aerican style for the remainder of his career. But the inking here is certainly not by Kida, wjich makes me doubt the whole thing. There is a Caniff influence with bold brushstrokes and well placed shadows. But there is also a weird sort of thinline doodling going on, creating a very special effect. The only atist I know doing such stuff is Bill Benulis. And he only inked his own work, if someone else didn't do that for him.

Unfortunately, this issue is not noted at the GCD (I will send them a list, with my other guesses on it as well, including a story that seems to have been drawn by Mike Sekowsky). The issues before and after have more uncertain art guesses, including a possible Johnny Craig cover on the issue before it.

So if anyone has a lead on this artist, I'd love to know. All the rest can just enjoy his nameless mastery.