The Original Biff

Sunday Clippy Day.

Biff Baker was a typical forties Sunday only adventure strip about a football player who falls from on adventure into the other. Signed "by Henry Lee" but was actually written by NEA comics editor Ernest ‘East’ Lynn and drawn by Hank Schlensker. Schlensker had been Roy Crane's assistant on Buzz Sawyer and went on to draw it again from 1947. Hwere are the first and last weeks. It seems the storyline was ended unceremoniously in the last week of january 1946 after which it was replaced by the stylistically similar but much more action oriented detective strip Vic Flint. 

Big League

Thursday Comic Strip Day.

When I showed the black and white Sunday pages of Henry Lee's Biff Baker a couple of weeks ago, I realized I had to sit down and start scanning my two yera long run of Captain Easy Sundays from the mid forties, by Walt Scott. In 1943 Roy Crane left his strip to start Buz Sawyer - a strip he owned himself in contrast to the NEA owned Easy. Walt Scott had been Crane's assistant so he seeemed like the perfect guy to take over. And I think he did quite well, but (comic) history has not been kind to Scott. I have never read any history of the comics that did not ignore or even badmouth Scott's run. Of course, he had impossible competition. Raoy Crane was a a tremendous artist who influenced many others, from Superman inventor Joe Shuster to Mad and Cracked master John Severin. At the same time Scott picked up the sunday the daily was continued by Leslie Turner, who was not the comic artist Crane was (how could he be), but he may have been one of the most competent artists ever to work in the newspapers. He kept the daily strip sequence at such a high level that is remained a competitor for Crane's own Sawyer. Walt Scott, in contrast, was a solid but somewhat stiff artist. He had also worked as a pitch in artist at Associated Press and would keep doing the occasional assignment and political cartoon for them. After he left Easy in the late forties, he started his own strip Little People, which was also quite stiff but benefited from a more whisical approach. He is rightly remembered for that. To me his strength on Easy is the same as his weekness on all of his work - a great sene of design (sometimes at the cost of the animation of his characters). He also drew very pretty women and as the years on Easy went by, the writers picked up on that.

Here we see a long run of his first year of the strip, at first unsigned but his traits are clearly there. The reason
I felt I had to show this after doing Biff Baker is te fact that the same triats show up in that strip. So either Scott helped out on that strip or Henry Lee assisted him. My guess is the former, by the way.

It's Not Easy Being Biff

Thursday Story Strip Day.

In my collection of unscanned forties adventure strips was a black and white rarity. So for today I prepared a long run of them. Henry Lee was the pseudonym of artist Hank Schlensker. According to the Lambiek comiclopedia he had been in the Air Corps in East Asia. I believe I have seen his name in my collection of war strips, so I'l have a look. He drew Biff Baker from 1941 to 1946 (although some sources say 1945, this run proves otherwise) and went on to become the assistant to Roy Crane's Buzz Sawyer. Eventually he even took over the strip (with one Edward Cranberry) when Crane died in 1974. I do see the Crane influence, but it looks more to me like either Schlensker was assisting Walt Scott on the Captain Easy Sundays or Scott was assisting on Biff. In that same stack of unscanned adventure strips from the forties is two years of Scott's Easy, but I can add one I prepared earlier to show the connection.

This is not the first time I shared some of these, so I have added those of the first post to make a loooong Christmas special out of it. two yhings we learn from those: first of all, there was a color version, eventhough all my new scans are black and white. Secondly, the Walt Scott resemblance doesn't start until the 1945 samles, whoch makes it more possible that Scott first assisted on Biff Baker, before going to Easy.

Thirdly, the last (color) one I had, comes immediately after my last black and white one. And although we have creeped into 1946, this does not seem like to end of the story.

 

1945