Saturday, February 06, 2016

Getting A Handle

Friday Comic Book Day.

Some weeks ago I shared a couple of Dorothy Dare stories from Parent's Magazine's Sweet Sixteen, which seemed to me to have been drawn by Milt Caniff's former assistant and Mel Graff's successor on Patsy in Hollywood. Like Patsy, it was a bout a girl working in the movie industry, although Dorothy was a couple years older and a stunt artist rather than a celebrity. At that time I said I would be on the lookout for more issues and I am glad to be able to present five more stories from that run, plus one from the Digital Comics Museum I accidentally left out last time. For those of you who want to know I identified the work of Raab, apart from the obvious Caniff inspired inklines? Have a look at the mustaches he draws on several of his characters and compare it to his work on Patsy.

One of the things that is great about this undocumented find, is the fact that it goves us a handle on what Raab's own strengths and weaknesses were at that time. Since he sometimes used Noel Sickles as an 'assistant' on Patsy, some people have proposed Sickles actually did everything and Raab was nothing more than a figurehead. Here we see, that he is more than capable of doing his own work - except maybe for one thing: as good as his backgrounds and inking are - and even the faces are nice and expressive - he does not always seems to have the right sense of figure placement and proportions. When Dorothy steps off the pavement in the second panel of the story from #8, her legs is seriously out of whack. And what is that dog doing next to her?



2 comments:

Smurfswacker said...

It's funny to see Dorothy wearing the Dragon Lady's famous "Bandit Queen" outfit in the sailing-ship story. I get the impression this was a deliberate homage rather than a simple steal.

Ger Apeldoorn said...

Probably both, I'd say. But indeed, I saw it too. If I am ever going to do my book on the school of Caniff, I will have to include that story.