Thursday Story Strip Day
Last week I showed a couple of sundays and dailes from the early fifties strip Dawn O'Day by Val Heinz.
Here are the two latest samples I have of this strip. I have also looked for more late daily strips, but most of the papers that ran the strip seem to have dropped it in 1953... The Sunday pages here are nothing more than realisticly drawn gags.
And because I always like to give you something to read on thursdays... I am topping this blog up with another rare treat... a long introc=ductory run of Fank Thorne's strip Dr. Guy Bennett. Thorne was an important DC artists in the late sicties and though still drawing pretty girl gags for Playboy, he is best known for coming up with the visuals for Conan's companion Red Sonja. He drew a great historical strip in the early fifties, that has been reprinted by Fantagraphics, but his longest and steadiest gig in the fifties was this diullish soap opera strip about the mnedical profession. Though competently drawn it was doomed ot failure, because story wise it had nothing to add to the genre. After the succes of The Heart of Juliet Jones and the ongoing succes of strips such as Mary Worth, Judge Parker and Rex Morgan everyone tried to come up with a soap opera strip of his own. Even Stan Lee tried to selel one with Vince Colletta, b ut more about that later. When Guy Bennett started in the Elyra Ohio Chrtonicle-Telegram, they introduced it to their audience with a full page of strips... to give them a chance to get hooked by the story. Now why wasn't that done more and why isn't it done anymore? If I were to offer a story strip, this is how I would try to sell it. In fact it is the same as television series like Heroes opening with a double episode.
3 comments:
So did Stan Lee and Vinnie Colletta ever do a newspaper comic strip? I would have bought the paper just to see that!
The author of Dr. Guy Bennett was Dr. Michael A. Petti originally of Brockton, MA. He went to Dartmouth and UPenn before joining the US Navy to fight in WWII. He fought with the Seabees in the south pacific and spent two years on the island of Bouganvilla, surviving bombings and treating the war wounded. He practiced medicine in Cleveland, OH and retired to Naples, FL in 1983. He resideded at Moorings Park until he died at age 93. Until his death he continued to write newsletters and publish interesting health facts and advice WYKTIS "what you know that isn't so". Moorings Park built and named a fitness facility for Dr. Petti in 2009.
DD linked here and mentioned that these strips are not by Frank Thorne but by the first artist Jim Seed. Indeed they are.
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