Then You See Her

Saturday Surprise Day. 

I have about 50% of 1949/1954 of Invisible Scarlett O'Neil. I don;t know if she was the first invisible hero in comics, but the started out in 1940 and managed to have her adventures until 1954 and even that was not the end of it. Scarlett herself had been losing her prime position and was replaced by a odd looking private detective in the later stories. To reflect that, the strip was renamed after him and went on to 1956 as Stanless Steel.

Invisible Scarlett O'Neil was created  by Russell Stamm, who had previously been an assistant to Chester Gould on Dick Tracy. His style from the start was a lot more friendly, but falls aquarely into what I call the Chicago school - which includes (to my eye) a wide range of artists, from fan favorite Boody Waters to Dick Moores - who is best know for his Disney work (Brer Rabbit) and taking over Gasoline Alley and seeting a new style for it. What all these artists have in common is a less literal approach to realism and none of them used the black and white inking techniques that were introduced by Noel Sickles and Milt Caniff and often drifting into the realm of caricature.

Scarlet's adventures were a little light on Nazi spies, Japanese saboteurs, master criminals and the like and frankly a little bit dull. From 1949 she is said to have used her invisibillity powers less, so we shal see how that turns out. I hope to do all of my pages, but it may take a while. I have the strip in various formats, but as you can see from the first two samples, I have reformatted them all the same - as a comic book sized one pager. I think they read the best that way (and it seemed more logical than turning some of my full page scans in to three tier half pages for unity).

 

Stainless Meets Rusty

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Some time ago I shared the last few Sundays of Invisible Scarlet O'Neil and the first few months of it's succssor Stainless Steel, both by Clarke and Stamm. Mostly by Clarke, by the way, who had been Stamm's assistant on the original strip (which had started in the early forties and can be seen as the newspaper's answer to the whole superheroe craze. By the midfiftie that aspect of it had atrofied and all tht was left was a detctive strip in a remarkable but also a bit stiff style. Here are the remainder of the Sundays, taking the strip all the way to it's end. I like reading the endings of strips and it seem to me that Stamm and Clarke knew what they were doing. The robot sus[ec is an added bonus.

Chicago Gangsters

Thurday Story Strip Day.

Last week I showed the last months of Russel Stam's Invisible Scarlet O'Neil. After that, it was changed into Stainless Steel. Here is the first of two installments of his last half year in Sundays.

Mostly Invisible

Thursday Comic Strip Day.

This strip is quite well known among collectors, because it has such a remarkable premiss and quite a long run. The Invisible Scarlet O'Neil started in the early forties. The main character was a lady detective who could turn invisible and the fanboys have made that to be that she was one of the first superheroines in the papers. But none of it was superhero-like in any other way. Only her 'origin' may sound a bit influenced by the comics of the times, but not knowing the artist Russel Stamm I am not sure that is where his influences lay. Here is how Don Markstein put it: "Scarlet got the power of invisibility from a ray her father, a scientist, was experimenting with. She curiously put just her finger in the ray, and suddenly disappeared, clothes and all. Fortunately, she discovered that a certain nerve in her left wrist could work as a toggle for the power — touching the nerve turned her invisibility on or off. This origin story was told in the first episode, in the form of a quick flashback to events years earlier, so she could get right into action. " Russel Stamm drew the strip in a solid 'Chicago school' style and indeed he had been an assistant to Dick Tracy. But this charming strip wa a lot more friendly and sems to have been a bit ore tongue in cheeck as well. Although it had a good long run, it seems not to have been in many large papers. I have never come across any original Sundays it appeared in, but it does pop up in many of the smaller papers available online.

Towards the end the gimmick of her invisibillity had apparently run out and the strip moved to another here, Stainless Steel. I have a lot of samples of those as well, which I will share the next two weeks.