I always try to look for new stuff on Sundays. Although I have shown some of the early fifties Perry Mason strip, I think this run is different enough to be allowed.
The Perry Mason strip actually started in 1950, with Mel Keefer as the artist. He was later replaced by a Charles Lofgren, whom I know little off (and he wasn't a good artist either). But late in 1951 Lofgren was replaced by a young artist working in his own version of the Rip Kirby style. In the late fifties this artist would take over another newspaper strip in a similar style, called Dr. Guy Bennett. But it wasn't until the sixties and seventies that he became famous as the artist of Red Sonja. It was of course, Frank Thorne. Here are his first few weeks of dailies. He took over the Sundays as well, but that was with a later (and seperate) storyline.
Perry Mason ws the creation of Erle Gardner, who may also have written the newspaper strip himself - since he "liked to keep a hand in everything" according to one internet source. These clipping come from the Dallas Morning News. They did not only run the strip daily and Sunday, they also had a weekly repeat of all dailies on Sunday as well (as they dd with Hopalong Cassidy an dsome other strips). I have only used that weekly version where I didn't have all the dailies, because it seems they squashed the dailies to save a bit of space. Or maybe they elongated them for the daiy version, but somehow I don't think that would have saved so much.
4 comments:
Many thanks for these.
This was a solid era for newspaper comics,
and I enjoy any adaptation of Perry Mason.
I wish I could have been around then to
read the strips as they were being published.
I will try and get some of the Sundays next times. They have a seperate storyline and I would love to do one or two whole stories.
Nice Ger!
Mel Keefer said that when he drew the Mason strip, the scripts were provided to him by Gardner's publisher, William Morrow. Whether the scripts were original or adapted from the books, I don't know.
There had been a Perry Mason radio show, a weekday soap opera (it went to TV as "The Edge of Night," with the character names changed), it's plugged in the 12/31 strip. The TV series starring Raymond Burr didn't begin until 1957. One wonders if the comic ran a bit longer, they would have used the likenesses of Burr and the TV cast?
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