In Glen David Gold’s review in the Washington Post of Michael Tisserand’s impressive biography of George Herriman—Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White—Glen suggest that “readers yearning to see full strips would do well to find the recently released Library of American Comics Essentials collection of 1934 ‘Krazy Kat’ daily strips, as it shows a kind of quotidian context that the biography omits.”
A perfect complement!
— And The Library of American Comics. We’ve put together this patriotic little sampler of July 4th, 1946 strips that includes a couple that have already appeared in our books (Little Orphan Annie Volume 12 and Dick Tracy Volume 10), plus a holiday offering from our new favorite heartthrob, Jane Arden, as well as a couple fun strips that both use one-word titles, but could not be more different in terms of execution. In our lead-off position, a stirring bit of patriotism from Ham Fisher–
Hoping you and yours have a fine Independence Day holiday!
Idly ruminating as springtime winds down and summer gets ready to pounce — “No more pencils!/No more books!/No more teachers’/Dirty looks!” — it occurred to me that while LOAC and its friendly competitors have brought scores of classic newspaper comics back into print for the enjoyment of modern-day audiences, there are still many, many series from the early-to-mid-20th-Century that today are on the radar screens of only the most dedicated strip fans. I did a bit of research to share a trio of them with you today.
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In the days when female newspaper reporters were commonly referred to as “sob sisters” because they were typically assigned to answering letters to the lovelorn or covering society events, Register & Tribune Syndicate hired writer Monte Barrett and artist Frank Ellis to give readers a woman news-hawk who was as scrappy and crusading as any of her male coumnterparts. Jane Arden debuted in 1928, well before Brenda Starr. Several artists followed Ellis on the feature, and by 1937 a Jane radio show was on the air. The next year the intrepid Miss Arden headlined a motion picture that failed to catch the public’s imagination, but her newspaper adventures continued for more than three decades afterward.
Several significant papers carried Jane Arden: here’s a 1932 ad for the strip that ran in the Des Moines Register:
Barrett, according to a syndicate biography, “was a newspaper correspondent during two Mexican revolutions and was twice wounded. It was while he was recuperating from his second wound that he met the girl who would later become his wife. Mrs. Barrett, herself a girl reporter, is the author’s inspiration and critic and she lends realism to the character of Jane Arden.” Three years later the Minneapolis Star ran this ad, one of many touting their contest to find a real-life Jane Arden:
You may be asking (doing that Bugs Bunny impersonation for which you’re so noted), “What’s all the hubbub, bub?” Here’s a bit of a taste of Jane Arden with a pair of strips, the first from November 23, 1935, the second from August 11, 1936 (note Russell Ross was drawing the strip at this time):
And here are a pair of back-to-back strips from June, 1940. Clearly, this rapscallion, Bissell, doesn’t know he’s picked the wrong gal to try scamming!
Two years after Bissell tried to rope Jane Arden into a shady operation, the comics pages saw the newspaper game being worked from a different angle thanks to the husband-and-wife team of Herb and Dale Ulrey. Hugh Striver was a teenaged newsboy who got mixed up in melodramas of small and large scope. Here’s an ad for the series, as it appeared in the Sunday, October 4, 1942 Minneapolis Star:
And here’s another that ran a month later, in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin:
Dale Ulrey was perhaps better known as Dale Conner, who had worked on Apple Mary and endured a rocky creative relationship with that feature’s eventual writer, Allen Saunders, who morphed Apple Mary into Mary Worth. After marrying Herb Ulrey, Dale teamed with her husband to create Hugh Striver. Here are three examples of their work, the first from November 2, 1942, the second dated November 11, 1944, and the last from January 29, 1945:
The chiaroscuro effects in the 1944 strip are especially eye-catching, aren’t they? Despite the talents of the Ulreys, the strip had less than a month to live following the January, 1945 strip above.
During the final months of 1942, as some papers were adding Hugh Striver and touting it to their readership, the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate was pushing a new launch of its own, one that would flame out even more quickly than did Striver. This new strip was the product of two fascinating women. Neysa McMein was a suffragette in her 20s, was involved with the major talents who gathered around the Algonquin Round Table, and was originally named “Marjorie” before she took on “Neysa” upon the recommendations of her numerologist. She built a stellar career in magazine illustration, including a fifteen year run as cover artist for McCall’s. In 1942 she partnered with Alicia Patterson, none other than (as Jay Maeder characterized her in a 1995 article) the “pampered socialite daughter” of Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, founder and ramrod of the New York Daily News. The two ladies produced a comic strip about an Egyptian princess who escaped her enemies by drinking an immortality serum that allowed her to remain in suspended animation even after being wrapped in a mummy’s shroud and locked away for thousands of years. In 1940, after Professor Hoot unearths her sarcophagus, she returns to life and finds action and exotic adventure in the then-modern world.
The name of the strip was Deathless Deer …
The three strips above, taken from the Los Angeles Times and spanning November 16, 1942 to February 12, 1943, give no sign of the problems that would plague this series. Her career in illustration left McMein unprepared for the rigors of pictorial storytelling and the grueling demands of the daily newspaper schedule. For her part, Patterson had no long-term plan for Deer and her supporting cast, and her attention was compromised by Newsday, the New York paper she and husband Harry Guggenheim had launched in 1940. Alicia’s father brought in some of his reliable talent to try to save the strip, which he had launched to great ballyhoo. Zack (Smilin’ Jack) Mosley was the chief firefighter, but he was incapable of preventing Deathless Deer from crashing and burning. Time magazine once dubbed the series the worst comic strip in history; it lasted for less than one year.
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Tastes differ, of course, and one thing we’ve learned is that every comic has a following of some size and enthusiasm. So who knows? One day you may see one of these strips — or one of their cousins that have similarly faded away with the passage of years — in an LOAC edition …
— You get a piece like this one, in which we answer the often-asked question, “What’s ahead for LOAC in the months to come?”
Firstuvall, we got your space opera right here! As 2017 unfolds you’ll see us wrap up our UK Star Trek comics and release the middle volumes in both our Star Wars and Star Hawks trilogies. To whet your appetite for the exploits of Rex, Sniffer, Alice K., and Chavez, here’s an April 1979 beauty, done in Gil Kane’s inimitable style:
ZAM!, indeed …
Old friends will continue to make fresh appearances — Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, and also our fourth Skippy book! This endearing kids-strip is always a delight, and Jared Gardner’s insights into the increasingly-troubled life of cartoonist Percy Crosby is compelling reading, an important addition to our understanding of comics history.
One of our old friends will offer something extra-special to readers — our upcoming Li’l Abner Volume 9 will provide a handful of strips that have never before been reprinted in continuity! What the dickens does THAT mean, you ask? Well, sharp-eyed readers of the Kitchen Sink Press Abner reprints from the 1980s/90s may remember there was a gap in the continuous run of strips between KSP Volumes 17 and 18 — the 1951 strips reprinted in Vol 17 ended on December 29th, with Fearless Fosdick still at the mercy of the “Atom Bum”. Vol 18 opened in Dogpatch with the January 21, 1952 daily, focusing on Abner and his brand-new chemistry set. What happened to the dailies in between? What was the fate of the Atom Bum? Here’s a snippet from one of the missing strips that makes it look bad for America’s ideel …
We asked Denis Kitchen about the missing strips and he reported that a layout problem in Volume 18 caused the dailies in question to be unintentionally dropped (and KSP had reprinted the full story of the Atom Bum in the first of their two Fearless Fosdick collections, published in 1990). Denis is always an invaluable part of our Li’l Abner team and he’s as happy as we are to see these strips being reprinted in continuity for the very first time. And oh, by the way, the other strips in our Abner Volume 9 are also literally History-Making — the mystery of Nancy O wraps up in 1951, and a major event in 1952 made the prestigious cover of Life magazine!
We have more than old friends to offer — as we recently discussed, we’ll also be welcoming Lynn Johnston’s exceptional For Better of For Worse to the LOAC line of books.
We’ll have more Disney comics for you to enjoy (don’t quack up — more Donald Duck Sundays are coming soon!), and Superman will be wrapping up the 1950s in a colorful collection of Sunday pages. Meanwhile, our next LOAC Essentials will showcase a strip we’ve used in a past “fantasy day comics page” or two (so you can use our “Search” feature to do a little research and start guessing …). This feature is one of my very favorites, but I won’t be writing the Introduction to the book, because we’ve lined up someone who may love this work even more than I do!
Of course, I will be writing the essay for Steve Canyon Volume 8 as we take Stevenson B.’s adventures deeper into the years of the Kennedy Administration. Here’s a sneak-peek at Milton Caniff’s Christmas thought for his audience, circa 1962:
Bottom line: what’s coming from The Library of American Comics in the months ahead? Loads of adventure and comedy — stories ranging from the Dogpatch hills to the depths of the Barnum Star System — and work by award-winning talents spanning the 1940s through 1970s. If you agree that’s a nice lineup, please join us for those books you’re sure to enjoy!
Stop a hundred random persons on the street and ask them which holiday they associate with the month of May. “Memorial Day” will certainly be the first many select. Others will choose “Mother’s Day.” Some will surely note that Ramadan starts on May 27th of this year.
Yet there are other holidays and observances tied to this often-most-pleasant-of-months. The very first day of the month is May Day, after all … Cinco de Mayo has become increasingly tied into the cultural zeitgeist … and this year Derby Day occurs one day later, on May 6th. The entire month is devoted to raising awareness for both Lyme Disease and Lupus. May 28th is National Burger Day, while the 31st is World No Tobacco Day.
For the purposes of this piece, however, we’re focused on the third Saturday in May, which is designated as Armed Forces Day in the United States. This observance was originally enacted in August of 1949 and marked the consolidation of the four major branches of the American military under the Department of Defense. The very first Armed Forces Day was also celebrated on a May 20th, in the year 1950.
So, with an itch to assemble one of our occasional “fantasy comics pages” that features various strips taken from one day in history, I decided to pick strips that were originally published on an Armed Forces Day early in the event’s history and settled on May 18, 1957.
I was pleased with the strips I chose from that date — a nice mix, I think, between drama continuities and comedy series, between easily-recognized strips (Archie, Mary Worth) and titles that have fallen into obscurity over time — Jeff Cobb, for example, or Morty Meekle. The former was artist Pete Hoffman’s adventure-hunting investigative reporter, the latter Dick Cavalli’s romance strip for NEA that quickly pushed the kid members of the supporting cast into the spotlight (by the mid-1960s Cavalli renamed the strip Winthrop, after the most prominent of the youngsters, making their takeover complete). Another modern-day obscurity I’ve included here is David Crane, launched in 1956 by Win Mortimer. In an interview with his widow published in Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego # 88, Mortimer’s widow described the strip by saying, “David Crane was small-town minister. Win had a good Biblical background; he could quote anything.”
I couldn’t resist including another installment of the delightful Penny, as well as a Long Sam — Bob Lubbers never made anyone forget Foster, Caniff, or Raymond, but he was a really excellent craftsman. Donald Duck was a “must-have” once I saw the newspaper Don was reading — J. Jonah Jameson take note! There’s not much smilin’ going on in this day’s Smilin’ Jack, and to mark the appearance of our tenth LOAC Essentials volume, featuring Norman Marsh’s Dan Dunn, I was glad to find a fresh example of Marsh’s later self-syndicated strip, Dan’l Hale.
As you look at this fantasy comics page, one thing may jump out at you — none of these strips make mention of Armed Forces Day! It will surely surprise no one to hear the May 18th, 1957 Steve Canyon was devoted to observing the day, and Caniffites can turn to page 78 of “Princess in Exile,” our sixth Steve Canyon volume, to see how the U.S. Cartoonist-in-Chief saluted the boys in uniform. For now, though, here’s our fantasy comics page from May 18, 1957 (click any strip for a larger view) …
You may have seen the announcement in some of the leading comics news-sites, but in case you missed it, we at LOAC are both proud and pleased to welcome For Better or For Worse to our lineup of titles. FBoFW was the first family-oriented comic strip created and produced by a female cartoonist — until FBoFW‘s launch in 1979, strips like Blondie or Family Circus were the product of the male of the species. Lynn Johnston’s exceptional work on this series stands as one of the signature achievements of late 20th/early 21st Century cartooning, and beginning this fall LOAC will republish For Better or For Worse in its entirety, in a series of nine hardcovers.
Johnston chronicles the lives of the Pattersons — Elly and John, and their children Michael, Elizabeth, and (eventually) April — in an extended family saga that is by turns funny, dramatic, touching, and resonant to the lives of those of us who inhabit the so-called real world. If you can’t identify with moment after moment as FBoFW unfolds, you’re likely living in a cave. LOAC Art Director Lorraine Turner — who’ll co-edit the series — put it this way: “Life is like a tide that ebbs and flows—raising children, caring for aging parents, and accepting the aches and pains of getting older. Lynn Johnston allowed us to witness—and sometimes laugh at—a part of ourselves through the eyes of her characters.”
From FBoFW’s first year — the September 19th daily for that year.
The Pattersons welcome in a new year in this strip from January 5, 1985.
Time marches on, but some experiences never change, as Johnston points out in this March 16, 2000 FBoFW installment.
If asked for gift-giving recommendations in the arena of “Comics for Those Who Don’t Know About Comics,” For Better or For Worse would be high on my list. It’s difficult for me to think of higher praise than that, so whether you’ll be revisiting old times with the Patterson family or meeting them for the very first time, I hope you’ll join us in welcoming For Better of For Worse to the distinguished LOAC roster of comics strips!
Put together while the Red Sox were picking up their first 2017 road win, a 7-5 victory over the Detroit Tigers …
ZAM! As Dean recently posted in this space, our Star Hawks Volume 1 will soon be on sale everywhere, and this longtime Hawks fan is mighty glad to see Rex, Chavez, and their friends back in print! Even though the series never ran in any of the local newspapers I took, I was eager to see it or anything about it back in those pre-internet days. After all, by the time Star Hawks debuted I had read hundreds of Gil Kane-drawn comic books and was a B*I*G fan. I was also regularly buying the major science fiction magazines at that time, and had read many a short story by Hawks writer Ron Goulart. (I later learned Goulart had ghosted the dozen original novels starring The Avenger that Warner Books published after completing their reprint of the twenty-four pulp adventures featuring Dick Benson and his Justice Inc. team, each written by Paul Ernst; still later I became acquainted with Mr. Goulart’s extensive comics research and scholarship.)
So my appreciation for both Goulart and Kane’s talents piqued my interest about the Star Hawks — and my first acquaintance with them came not through the comics, but through the original Hawks novels Mr. Goulat wrote, and which were published with Gil’s spot illustrations, in 1980 and 1981 by Playboy Press.
The front covers to EMPIRE 99 (the first original STAR HAWKS prose novel) and its sequel, THE CYBORG KING.
As you can see, I still own those books! They didn’t disappoint me, delivering Goulart’s patented style of action and humor, plus some fine interior black-and-white illustrations that are Pure Kane.
Back cover text and Gil Kane art for the EMPIRE 99 paperback.
Eventually Star Hawks was reprinted and I was on hand to plunk down my money every time a new edition was released. This latest incarnation of the Hawks is my favorite — after all, this time I got to play a small role in putting it together! Aside from the hands-on fun, our layout prints one two-tier daily per page, making this book read like one of our Essentials volumes on steroids! It’s a fitting showcase for Gil Kane’s always-delicious artwork, and Goulart’s stories remain as frothy today as they were in the late ’70s, when they were first published.
Yes, I’m pardonably prejudiced, but I heartily recommend Star Hawks Volume 1!
Be on the lookout for this cover at your favorite local or on-line comics shop or bookseller!
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HIIII-YAA-A-A! Anyone currently purchasing Marvel Comics’s complete reprinting of 1970s/80s sensation Master of Kung Fu — which is back in the marketplace in the form of four thick hardcover Omnibus editions (the first three of which are already on sale, with the fourth slated to complete the series later this year) — will also get a taste of LOAC a’borning, though at the time neither Dean nor I had an inkling of what the future held in store.
That inkling comes because Crafty Cory Sedlmeier, editor for this Omnibus project, is including not just the story content for each reprinted issue, but the letters page(s) as well — and both Dean and I cut our milk teeth writing letters of comment that appeared in many Marvel mags of that era, including MOKF. I’ve read the first two Omnibus volumes and for the most part enjoyed getting reacquainted with Shang-Chi, Sir Denis Nayland Smith and his coterie of once-and-former MI-6 agents, and the broad range of nefarious criminal masterminds they opposed; the series is at its pinnacle when writer Doug Moench and artist Paul Gulacy are shaping the material. Volume three is sitting on my “To Be Read” shelf, slated for a summertime perusal, and I find myself looking forward to re-reading the issues in which Moench and Mike Zeck combined to produce solid monthly extensions of the foundation built by Moench/Gulacy.
Dean’s first letter to MOKF shows up relatively early in the run; my first contribution to “Missives to the Master” appears in Omnibus Volume 3. So if you’re looking for some of the earliest-planted seeds of LOAC, or you’d like to experience some of the best comics storytelling of the ’70s and early ’80s, you’ll find both in the Master of Kung Fu Omnibuses.
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THWIP! We have The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 4 at the printer, getting ready for its post-Memorial-Day on-sale date. Fred Kida and Floro Dery spearhead the artistic efforts on display in these comics from 1983 and 1984, as that friendly neighborhood web-spinner teams up with the Sub-Mariner, battles The Eliminator, learns how deadly the female of the species can be, and faces shock after shock when an impostor makes the scene!
Former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter generously allowed me to interview him for my text feature for this volume. In an extensive and wide-ranging discussion, Mr. Shooter talked candidly about his work assisting Stan Lee on plotting the early Spider-Man strips; what he has to say will add a new dimension to your appreciation and understanding of this series.
As is often the case with the best interviews, Mr. Shooter gave me more interesting material than I could fit into the space available. Let me share with you one very pleasant anecdote, dealing with Mr. Shooter’s encounter with Marvel impresario Stan Lee years after their Spider-Man collaboration.
Former Marvel Comics E-I-C and self-proclaimed “large mammal,” Jim Shooter.
Shooter said, “I was in Denver for a convention and Stan was also there. He’s in this area, like a curtained fort. He’s got like a hundred helpers and he gets his picture taken all day, and he signs autographs all day.
“I’m walking to my table and I’m walking past this line of a thousand people waiting to have their picture taken with Stan. I told myself, ‘I can’t bother this guy, he’s in a full court press, just leave him alone.’ But Stan heard I was at the show, and he sent folks over to me and they said, ‘Look, if you stick around a little bit after the end of the show, once all the pictures are taken, Stan would really like you to come over and see him.’ I said, ‘Sure.’ So I stuck around after the show. His person came and brought me over and took me inside the curtained fort. I could just see through a little space in the curtain, and there’s Stan with the last twenty or thirty people, getting their pictures taken. He sat in his chair and there were all his people, and they would say, ‘You! Here! Look! Go!’ ‘You! Here! Look! Go!’
“Finally the last bunch of them are done and I was taken into the photo room of the curtained fort. I walked in and he was so happy to see me. I’m telling you, sharp as a tack. We picked it up as if we’d just left, but I haven’t seen him for I don’t know, fifteen years, but it was like yesterday. We just started talking and we couldn’t talk fast enough.
“The thing with Stan is, every night at a certain time he calls his wife, Joan. So he has to get back to the hotel room to make the phone call. We’re gabbing away and his folks are screaming at us: ‘Stan! Gotta go! Right now! Come on, Stan! Right now!’ But we’re jabbering away like crazy and then he says, ‘Wait! We have to have a picture!’ So he stood up, put his arm around me, and we took a picture. He said, ‘Print two of ‘em and give one to him right now!’ (Usually they print the pictures overnight.) Then they literally dragged him away.
“The next day his person came over to my table and said, ‘Do you have that picture you took with Stan?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘He wants to sign it.’ I said, ‘OK, sure.’ One of my friends went with Stan’s guy and they interrupted Stan and said, ‘Stan, you know, here’s a picture, for Jim.’ They said he sort of stared at it for a while, then he signed it and sent it back with my friend. She said he was having this nostalgic moment, you know?
“Well, I can relate, Stan, because I had one, too.”
For more from Mr. Shooter, you know where to turn — our upcoming Amazing Spider-Man, Volume 4!
It may not be May the Fourth yet, but we’ve received our advance copy of STAR WARS: The Classic Newsapaper Strips Volume One, featuring amazing artwork by Russ Manning, Rick Hoberg, Mike Royer, Dave Stevens, and Alfredo Alcala. (Plus a cover by Al Wiliamson!) Look for it in stores on May 10th!
Here we are — the 10th volume of LOAC Essentials, making a pretty impressive display on the ol’ bookcase.
As Bruce Canwell writes in the introduction: This volume represents something of a departure for the LOAC Essentials series, and for The Library of American Comics as a whole.
Dan Dunn, Secret Operative 48 debuted as a Monday-through-Saturday daily in September, 1933. By early 1934 a Sunday page had been added and Dunn’s creator, Norman Marsh, integrated the Sunday with the daily strips to form a continuous narrative that ran seven days a week.
Not every American, however, read both the daily and Sunday editions. Millions of readers never took the daily newspaper, but spent hours each week poring over the thick, feature-filled Sunday edition. Millions of others, by contrast, purchased only the weekday paper, its information and entertainment brightening their commute to or from work.
Like many of his peers Marsh advanced his stories only slightly in the Sundays, typically providing a recap in Monday’s strip to insure his readers were up-to-date on Dan’s crime-busting activities. In some weeks, however, the leap from Saturday to Monday was a little steeper than normal.
In containing only the dailies from the first year-plus of Dunn’s existence, this LOAC Essentials collection allows readers to share the experience of those countless households that did not take a Sunday paper.
