Girl With a Mission

Wednesday Hollywood 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 and the AP outfit, some of my favorites (and all 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. 

Patsy in Hollywood was created by AP regular Mel Graff in a faux (but very well executed) Milt Caniff style. In the early forties the artwork was taken over by Charles Raab, one of the most forgotten Caniff illustrators. After he left to got to war, the strip was taken over by George Storm and Richard Hall, who changed it from a Caniff style adventure strip to a cuter gag strip. In Bill Dyer (1946-1955) returned it to a more adult series, which actual storylines and funny Sundays. The Sundays were marked by the fact that the last panel gag always was half a page. I have actually been able to find a few in color (as well as having an original), which I have shared earlier. But here are some more - and because the coloring was softer, the micro-fiche scans actually turned out better than the others in this series of posts.

Hen's Teeth

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Last week I showed some of Charles Raab's daily strips of Ap's Patsy in Hollywood (which had been started by Mel Graff). In the late forties the strip was taken over by Bill Dyer, who used a far less serious style and has been ignored by the comic hostorians for not being Graff, Raab or Sickles. As I have shown before with the Sundays I colected and scanned, his verson of the kid's adventure strip actually worked quite well and it is no surprise it ran until well in the the fifties. For some reason there Sundays from some AP strips are ultra rare. Frank Robbins' Scorchy Smith is impossible to find and if you do they are very expensive. Likewise, the Bill Dyer Patsy Sundays are not easy to come by (thogh cheaper). Four of these have Scorchy Smith Sundays by A. C. Hollingsworth on the back, a rare treat. The Sundays from his predessor Edmund Good are a bit more common (and they were reprinte din one of the comic book series that used newspaper strips). But the most uncommon strip must have been George Tuska's Scorchy Smith Sundays. When I was ooking for microfiche copies of his daily version, believing he had never done Sundays, I found to my surprise he dis actuallt do two years of them, following Hollingsworth, stopping about two years agao before the daily stopped. SInce finding microfiche copies of those, I have actively looked for and never found any actual dailies in color.