Scouting For Comic Lovers

Saturday Evening Post.

For today's random offering I have chosen a non sequential set of early fifties Jed Cooper Sunday strips by Dick Fletcher. They come from the larger (complete) set of tearsheets I have of another strip. Still, they are worth showing as far as I am concerned. Fletcher was a compettent artist, who had done the soap opera detective Surgeon Stone in the later years of the forties. In that strip he soon adopted the style of Milt Caniff. By the time he created this strip (as a Sunday only for the Chicago Sunday Tribune newspaper and syndicate) he had developed his own impressive version of that style. During the fifties, he slowly toned it down, turning Jed Cooper more and more into a general and blad strip, that was not remembered long after it ended. But those first few years are pretty impressive. Elsewhere on this blog, I have written about the writer of Jed Cooper, who worked for the Tribune. If you click on the link you will find that, as well as a couple more early Sundays.

Go Go Chicago

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Jed Cooper was a staple of the fifties and appeared two papers from which I have large runs, but mostly from the later fifties. I never actually scanned it, because I found it a poor cousin to the Milton Caniff influenced strips and it's historical subject made it slightly boring. But when I came across the first few years of Richard Martin (Dick) Fletcher and Loyd Wendt' Sunday only strip, I changed my mind. At least it looked gorgeous back then. Fletcher also did Sugeon Stone before this strip, from which I have pretty much the whole run and will show some day in the future. Loyd Wendt was a Chicago journalist. It struck me that his last name is the same as Chicago born Cheers actor George Wendt, but there seems to be no connection.

Pioneer Work

Thursday Story Strip Day.

On my scanning pile is a whole lot of Surgeon Stone Sundays. I have shown color and original black and white Sundays of this strip before. It is a late forties medical mystery/soap by Richard Martin Fletcher (who is not the same as the Richard Fletcher that illustrated Old Glory Story. Making things even more obscure is the fact that Richard Martin did draw a series similar to the historical adventure strip of his namesake. I never collected much of it, mainly because it is one of those strips that do not really work if you can not read it. Still, it is beautifully drawn, as you can see from these. Lloyd wendt was a Chicago journalist and writer who in 1961 became the editor of Chicago's American (later known as Chcago Today).