Lack of Dawn

Friday Brand New Day. Years ago I acquired a large run of Sundays from the late forties early fifties adventure strip Dawn O'Day by Val Heinz. A remarkable strip about a young model trying to make it in Hollywood, because it started out as a Sunday only and was drawn in a faux Milton Caniff style by an artist who was not known for that before or after. I may have seen a three tier half page Sunday somewhere, but I get the impression it was only ever used as a two tier third. In fact, the originals I am showing here only have the two tiers as well. After a year or so the strip was succesful enough to try out a daily run. But that turned out to be unsustainable, either because of of low sales or because iot just was too much work. Val Heinz had been working as an assistant on Gasoline Alley for Frank King alongside Bill Perry, who later took over Gasoline Ally altogether. I think he went into advertising and signpainting after Dawn O'Day was discontinued in 1954. Before that, the daily version had stopped and although the earlier Sunday formed a continuity, the later ones were in fact seperate gags. I have shown many samples of my run and have scanned all of them. I am not proud to say a huge number of them are still waiting to be cleaned. But here are a couple of later originals, I picked up elsewhere. With that, i have two announcements from Editor and publisher. One for the start of the Sunday feature and one for the start of the daily. I also have an 1948 article about Heinz, Perry and King.

 

Early Pick-Up

Saturday Leftover Day.

A couple of years ago I aqcuired an almost complete set of Val Heunz' Dawn O'Day Sundays. I started scanning and showing them, but stopped somewhere halfway through 1951. So here are some more, picking up where I left. I would love to see some dailies as well. Dawn started as a Sunday only, later added a daily version for a short time and later returned to just Sundays. I get the impression that during the time there was a daily, the story continued from the Sundays into the week. When the daily stopped, the Sunday reverted to more of a gag format.

I Can If You Can

Saturday Story Strip Day.

I was lucky enough to get a long run of Val Heinz' Dawn O'Day, which I am sharing in installments whenever I have cleaned a few. For Heinz' development as an artist please follow the links.

The Crack of Heinz

Saturday Leftover Day.

Over the last few years I have been slowly sharing an almost complete run of Van Heinz' Dawn O'Day Sundays. Val Heinz is noted to have started with Gasoline Alley, along with creator Frank King and Bill Perry, who took over the strip when King passed away. I don't know if Heinz remained with the series, but he soon started his own adventure strip, drawn in a completely new style - for which he borrowed Milt Caniff's inking style. A weird strip, which first ran as a Sunday only, later got a daily version and ended up as Sunday only after all. If you want to track Heinz' progress, just click the link and go back.