Here is another strip from the early forties, one from a whole lot of stuff I bought this year. Hap Hopper was a relatively longrunning strip, officially written by the duo of political columnists,Drew Pearson and Robert Allen. I don't know if they just wrote the storylines or the dialogue as well, but I am pretty sure these Sunday gag pages were ghostwritten. At least they do not benefit from Pearson and Allen's political insights and just relied on character gags. The artist is Jack Sparling, who delivers a pretty strong style for a strip this early. he went on to become one of the most reliable and sadly preductable journeyman comic book artists. Never for the A-list publishers, but neither did he work for the bottom feeders. Although some of his work breathes a Will Eisner atmosphere, although he never actually worked for him or his studio.
As with most of the strips I am showing this week, I have ore when I am ready scanning and cleaning them. In 1942 he left Hap Hopper to create his own Claire Voyant, which I have as well.
2 comments:
I think that Pearson and Allen, who wrote the "Washington Merry-Go-Round" newspaper column (later taken over by Jack Anderson), were only paid for the use of their names. Similarly, Eddie Rickenbacker was credited for writing the "Ace Drummond" strip (and in his 1964 autobiography, he still claimed to have created and written the strip), and racing driver Peter DePaolo was co-credited in Frank Frazetta's "Johnny Comet" strip (when it changed to "Ace McCoy," the actual writer, Earl Baldwin, finally got credit).
As you pointed out in an earlier post, after Sparling left "Hap," Al Plastino changed it to "Barry Noble."
FYI: Sparling mostly finished his career was an A-lister, DC. Last work I recollect was at Charlton in the mid-70s on the B&W books, but I can be full crap on that. Whatevs; a journeyman whose work I really enjoyed.
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