Scorched Worth

 Sunday Cleaning Day. Some years ago I collected a whole lot of Sunday strips from the Midland Reporter Telegram. The MRT was a NEA paper, which means that they had all of the lesser known and lesser distributed strips from that syndicate, some of my favorites (and very hard to find). Unfortunately the mico-fiche scans were very bad, ranging from way too dark to far too light. Cleaning out my files, I decided to share them anyway for the unseen gems that may be among them. I am starting with the much maligned Sunday run of Scorchy Smith by Rudlow Willard. Although it is no way as impressive as Frank Robbins' run ten years earlier, it is also a lot better than Edmund Goode's run inbetween. And it is actually not badly wirtten. After Willard left in 1952, the daily and Sunday Chores were taken over by A. C. Hollingsworth in a spectaculary artful style. After a year George Tuska stepped in and continued it until he was asked to do Buck Rogers. Both runs are completely disappeared from newspaper strip history books and actually were one of the reasons I started this blog. I shared a few color samples from my own collection and managed to find more of both series. Holingsworth's is pure science fiction and spectacular. Tuska took it back to it's American Pilot roots and delivered a very tight crime/spy series in a Milt Caniff light style. The Scorchy Sundays stopped in December 1955 and I have yet to see a printed version live.