Terry And The Cowboys

Saturday Leftover Day. 

I ama bog fan of Ray Bailey, who worked as an assistant to Milt Caniff in the early forties and went on to do two daily and Sunday newspaper strips of his own; Bruce Gentry in 1945-1950 and Tom Corbett in the early fifties. After that he returned to Caniff (in a way) by becoming the main artist on Dell's Steve Canyon comic book series (it is rumored Caniff still did the heads himself, although it is clear Bailey could do those as well). What I didn't kno, is that he did a lot more at Dell (and later WEstern), who remained his main emplyer well into the sixties, working for such titles as Turok and Boris Karloff Mysteries. I am going to get as many of those pages and stories as possible. Here is one of the earliest, a nice little western he did in 1957. In fact, he contributed two stories to this issue (the last of the series) with John Buscema doing the third. This is the second one, which I found the most impressive of the two. It was another return for Bailey, who had done a Sunday only called Vesta West for the Chicago Tribune syndicate's Comic Book in 1943, while still working for Caniff.

An Array of Ray

Saturday Story Strip Day.

I found a couple more Tom Corbett, space Cadet Sunday I had not scanned before. This remarkable strip by former Milt Caniff assistant Ray Bailey is one of the best collected strips on eBay. I don't know if my promting of this strip (and Bailey's strip before that, Bruce Gentry) is the reason they have gon up in price so much - but even outside of eBay they are always sold quickly and at high prices. I will add these three to my longer post with all of the dailies and Sundays. If you like this sort of thing, you can also look for the aforementioned Bruce Gentry and for a special treat link to Vesta West, Ray Bailey's first solo strip (from 1942) and the propaganda booklet Blockbusters from Oil, which Bailey also did in 1942. Both the Vesta West tearsheets and the Bluckbusters booklet are on sale on my eBay page right now, if you want to have the real thing: https://www.ebay.com/sch/gerapeldoorn/m.html?item=153237068726&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

Betting On Tom C.

Thursday Story Strip Day.

When I started this blog, one of the favorites I wanted to share was Ray Bailey's Tom Corbett. Bailey worked as an assistant on Terry and the Pirates, before starting on his own. Tom Corbett is his third strip and a joy to see. It's like seeing what a Milt Caniff science fiction strip would have looked like, with the occasional dinosaur thrown in.

I was lucky enough to run into several runs of the daily strip as well (not to mention the enormous help from friendly visitors) and decided to do the whole three year run of the strip (as far as I could). I made it as far as November 1952, well into the second year. I was able to include many color Sundays and filled the gaps with black and white microfiche versions. But there it stopped. I have put off getting more microfiche scans needed to continue the run and the beautiful color Sundays I have scanned in since then are burning a hole in my pocket.

So here, a bit less compete than usual (but I promise to fill in the gaps), is a couple of months worth of what followed.