Li'l Gargleweed

Friday Snow Day.

 

Brett Koth was an assistant to Jim Davis who assisted Tom Ryan. Koth continued the sarcastic streak of his teachers in Li'l Diamond. It is actually one of my favorites strips form the last decade.

 

Katz in the Cradle

In 1944 comic creator Gil Kane, joined the army under his real name Eli Katz. He was still at the start of his career, having just done his first work for Stan Lee at Marvel and Joe Simon and Jack Kirby at DC. In January and February he was stationed at Camp Berkely in Abeline, Texas. Since this was a training camp and Kane is know to have ended up in the Pacific, I assume he was there for training. But he had time left to join the cam newspaper, where he did a couple of illustrations and his own realistically drawn strip Katz'an'Jammers. I have several episodes, but am keeping a few back for a later publication. The paper was proud to have him and did a small interview, where he revealed for the first and only time to the fact that he had assisted Milt Caniff on his army newspaper strip Miss Lace.

Start Your Day Well

 Saturday Cream Day.

Al Capp rented out his characters for Li'L Abner for various ad series. You come across them everywhere, but I never really bothered to save or scan them. Still, after seeing so many Fearless Fossdick ads for hair tonic, I just started picking them up everywhere. The same goes for Li'l Abner and Daisy May's ads for Aunt Jemiah's Cream of Wheat breakfast porridge, used in magazines and Sunday newspaper magazines. I have sample of them fom 1944 to 1956 and I am still not sure if and where they were doubled. It is save to assume Capp's involvement in these was minimal, but they do look like the real thing. The quality various from scans I amde myself to samples I got from online material. At the end I have one more with another famous newspaper character.

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