The Scorchy Smith Sundays by Frank Robbins run form late in 1941 until he left the strip somewhere in 1944. They are the holey grail for all Milt Caniff school collectors, hard to find and when you do they are quickly sold and very expensive. I guess you can always try and find one of those comic books that collected them, but that is not the really thing of course. Or you can try and find microfiche newspaper files but then they are in black and white and probably not photographed too well because of that. Still that is what I tried and I only partially managed to do that. I showed you most of the first year in black and white and here is what I could find of 1944, the year that Robbins left and the strip (both Sunday and daily) was continued by Edmund Goode. I hope one day to share the real thing with you and anyone who has color samples is encouraged to contact me. Same goes for the later Sundays by A.C. Hollingsworth and George Tuska. The first I never have even seen in color and the second is so rare, I did not even know it existed until a couple of years ago.
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8 comments:
Many thanks for posting these! What a treat as you're right, they're incredibly difficult to find.
Over 20 Years ago I was deeply involved in researching Scorchy Smith as part of my profile article on Bert Christman. I spent countless hours at microfiche machines and in interviews with Flying Tigers pilots and comic historians. Alex Toth was the one who told me that the Robbins Scorchy work, particularly the storyline in Russia, was THE work to find. He said that the comic work that he most wanted to see again in his lifetime, and hopefully some day I would find it.
Thanks for all of the great scans that you post, and the informative notes that go with them. You've outdone yourself today, I really appreciate it.
I hope one day to do a book representing one storyline each of all Caniff imitators and already gotten a full storyline in color - but the collector would rather have that I do not share it online and I understand. Maybe we can have contact through Facebook and I can ask some questions?
I will mail you now. So if you want to remove this mailadress, that's okay by me.
Thanks for highlighting an excellent but undeservedly obscure (due to circumstances you outline) comic strip.
Just discovered your site. I have been a Johnny Hazard/Frank Robbins fan and collector since 1954 when I began clipping Haz from our local small town paper. This paper carried the strip from 1947 thru the end in 1977. Sadly I stopped collecting in the early 1960s when I was a teenager. Have since going back and tried to rebuilt my collection, hoping someday to have all the dailies. Do have all the Sundays thanks to Tony Raiola and Pacific Comics Club.
Thanks for the Scorchy Smith Sundays by Robbins and the ads. Love them all. Keep up the good work! Will be following your site closing from now on.
Great to have you. Be sure to look for the other Caniff imitators in my collection. I am particulary proud of all I have assembled from Ray Bailey. Either some other collectors discovered him at the same time as I did, or my posts were instrumental in causing the price of his Sunday pages to more than double. Especially Bruce Gentry is very hard to find these days. I hope that one day I will be able to do a book on all Caniff imitators, including more of Robbins' Scorchy.
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