Thursday Story Strip Day.
I showed a set of dailies of the forgotten western strip Gene Autry in an earlier post. Here is a run of Sundays. Not as well drawn as Hopalong Cassidy and not as famous as The Lone Ranger, but it certainly shows how excellent even the downright middle of the road newspaper strip artists were in the fifties.
Who on earth draws this? I don't see any signature...
ReplyDelete"In fact, Laws is a penname for comic strip packager Al Stoffel (Alfred Laws Stoffel), who is also credited for writing the original 'Bugs Bunny' and 'Woody Woodpecker' newspaper strips. Sources say the 'Gene Autry' strip was initially drawn by Pete Alvarado, then Tom Cooke and later by Mel Keefer".
ReplyDeleteGer:
ReplyDeleteAll of the pages you posted were anonymously drawn by Tom Massey, a former Disney animator who drew quite a lot of stuff for Western Publishing. In fact Western produced the Gene Autry strip, and "Bert Laws" was Albert Law Stoffel, its editor and script supervisor. Phil Evans was the actual writer. I have never seen any Gene Autry strips by either Alvarado or Cooke, whereas I know that Nat Edson drew the dailies in 1954-55 while Massey (who was concurrently doing the Tim Tyler's Luck page for KFS) drew the Sundays. Mel Keefer apparently drew the strip before it folded on November 5, 1955.
Best,
Alberto
If anyone would know, it's you Alberto.
ReplyDelete