Happy Eastern, Too

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

Although the previous installment's of Chad Grothkopf's run on Famous Fiction were shown on thursdays with the other story strips, I guess this on fits better on the comic strip Tuesday. Should be Christmas anyway, but some followers were asking for it.

Early Days, Big Dreams

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Two leftovers. The two Famous Fiction Sundays were scanned when I was doing the Famous Fiction stories by Chad Grothkopf. Although these are credited to him as well, he had already left the strip by then and was replaced by someone with a duller, more common style. The three Vesta West strips after that are more interesting. Vesta West was started by Fred Maegher, who would later find comic book fame as the artist of Straight Arrow. He was followed by Ray Bailey, whose work on this strip, Bruce Gentry, Tom Corbett and on to comic books has been documented on this blog exstensively. In these three samples, we can see his progress as an artist in the early forties. Baley started out as an assistant to Milt Caniff (and as such even contributed a lot to his work and style in the mid forties). If I ever do a book on Caniff followers and imitators it will be to give artists such as Bailey their moment in the sun.

No Two Ways

Thursday Story Strip Day.

After Alice in Wonderland and Ali Baba Chad Grothkopf drew another story for Famous Flagg. Either this one took longer or the second, later ones were used out of their normal run. I went to Alberto Becattini's web contribution about Grothkopf here (http://alberto-s-pages.webnode.it/news/chad-grothkopf/, scroll down for English) but unfortunately he did not add a list. I am sure he may have one, Alberto knows more than most historians. Anyway, here you see rothkopf taking the realistic version of hs style even further. According to one online source Stan Lee wrote this adaptation and maybe even another. But if that is true it wold be the first and only time I have seen Lee spell the word 'through' as 'through'and not 'thru' (even in his private contacs). Maybe the syndicate was more precise in their spelling or Grothkopf for them? For now I feel this counts as a disqualifier for Lee's involvement. But still.. can anyone help me get a more complete set?

Ali B. In The Land Of Wonder

Thursday Story Strip Day.

After Alice in Wonderland Chad Grothkopf did a couple more classic stories. For Ali Baba he veered towards a more realistic style. I had a look to see if my earlier run of black and white microfiche scans had any extra, but they are the same set , so this may in fact be the whole story.

A Darker Shade

Thursday Story Strip Day.

In the forties Chad Grothkopf did a series Sunday pages called Famous Fiction. I have shown quite a few of these, namely the Alice in Wonderland and Ali Baba adaptation. Those were in a variation of his 'funny' style, which he later simplified to use in comics and for the Howdy Doody newspaper strip as well. But he also had a 'serious' style, whch he used for his earliest comic book work and the Sunday edition of True Comics (where he was only one of many artists contributing). So here is part of a story he did in the serious style. A remarkable artist with a remarkable career.

Illustrated Classics

Thursday Story Strip Day.

An early comic book creator who deserves a lot more attention than he has been getting, Chad Grothkopf started out as a film poster artist for Paramount in his twenties. From 1930 to 1939 he worked for Disney, after that we see him doing all sorts of early comic book stuff for a variety of publishers. As far as I am concerned, he didn't into his own until he started develeoping his recogizble thick outline style for Stan Lee's funny animal books in the forties. I learned about his work from the Howdy Doody Sunay only newspaper strip, a terrific cut estrip with just a little bit of bite he drew this Sunay only strip between 1950 and 153 and even appeard on an episode of the Howdy Doody Show with Milt Neil, the designer of the puppet who may or may not have drawn or written the feate with Grothkopf. Fot a short period in 1951/52, the strip was wrtten by Stan Lee. Samples form that run I have already shown. Later in the fifties he returned to (television) anmation and storyboards and he seems to have dropped fro iew for most fans and histrians. His most succesful newspaper strip through, ran fro 1942 to 1946 and deserves to be seen and (dare I say it) reprinted. I would prefer to have color samples, but here I have two comlete stories from Famous Fiction as well als the first page of a third one. His thicklined style works very well with the material and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.