Library of American Comics

Are you saying to yourself, “Man, LOAC has collected about thirty years of Strip X, over twenty years of Strip Y, and almost fifteen years of Strip Z”? Are you wondering, “Haven’t we seen it all, heard it all, learned it all by now?” Are you thinking, “After tens of thousands of reprinted strips, behind-the-scenes photos, rarely-seen artwork, and quotes served up from fan mail, newspaper articles, and interviews with the cartoonists’ families and friends, what more do they have to share with us?”

Is that what you’re asking, Bunkie?

Well, we can give you the short answer in four words: “You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!” And we’ll back it up by teasing you with these questions regarding four of our more senior ongoing projects …

What is the connection between Jan Brady and Dick Tracy? You’ll need to read our upcoming Dick Tracy Volume 23 to find out …

She has a body any man would desire (but Li’l Abner is impervious to such charms) – so what is it about Nancy O.’s face that young Yokum finds irresistible? And how does it launch a coast-to-coast publicity campaign? (And for that matter, how does Abner go from panting after Nancy O. to marrying Daisy Mae?) The answers lie in our Big Wedding Edition, Volume 9 of Al Capp’s remarkable Li’l Abner …

In her own kind-hearted way, did Poteet Canyon promote the phrase, “Don’t have a cow” three decades before Bart Simpson made it popular? Check out Poteet’s unusual brush with the bovine in our next installment (Volume 8) of Milton Caniff’s picaresque Steve Canyon …

And which famous cartoonist (whose work also gets collected by LOAC) sent a note to Harold Gray that begins: “This is a fan letter … You’ve done a damned good job blasting the phony ‘Anti-Comic Book Crusade.’ If more cartoonists were aware of the danger of this thing, we might squash it …”? Jeet Heer has the answer for you in our fourteenth volume of the adventures of the kid with a heart of gold and a quick left hook – Little Orphan Annie!

As if this isn’t enough, factor in more Superman, more Disney, the conclusion of Red Barry, more Spider-Man, our first collection of For Better or For Worse, and one especially magic word (“Tippie”!). When you add it all up, we think you’ll agree The Library of American Comics train is chugging along at top speed!

I marked another birthday recently (“marked” seems a more appropriate description than “celebrated,” I think) and my mother and siblings all chipped in to get me a truly one-of-a-kind gift:

In case you’re wondering what makes a baseball “cool,” as you may be able to tell, this is a “game-used” ball, one inscribed by Hall of Famer and Number 8 of the Boston Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski. Further, “Yaz” annotated the ball in commemoration of his Triple Crown win in 1967.

Baseball’s Triple Crown occurs on those rare instances when a player leads his league at the end of a season in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in (RBIs). Yaz’s Triple Crown made him the last player to accomplish the achievement for for forty-five years, until Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers “hit the trifecta” during a stellar 2012 season.

Yaz’s Triple Crown was especially significant, because ’67 was the year of the “Impossible Dream,” when Boston rebounded from a ninth-place finish the year before (in the days before leagues were divided into divisions based on geography) and won the American League pennant. In any team endeavor it takes the contributions of many to achieve a goal, yet those 1967 Red Sox were clearly following Yastrzemski’s lead. In tight race against the Minnesota Twins that decided the pennant winner on the last day of the season, Yaz had seven hits in eight at-bats, with six RBIs, during the dramatic final two games of the year. It exemplified his play for that entire campaign — more knowledgeable students of the game than me have proclaimed it, “the greatest single-season performance by any player in the modern era.” Though the Sox lost to the Cardinals in the ’67 World Series, Yaz hit .400 with three home runs and five RBIs for the Series.

Wag that I am, I’ve said the stains you see on the ball in the picture above were probably nicotine stains from Yaz’s fingers — in those less-enlightened times, he was one of many athletes who were known to regularly puff away on cigarettes. The tobacco certainly didn’t affect his longevity. Having previously shifted from patrolling left field to playing first base, a broken hand suffered in September 1975 by regular left fielder Jim Rice sent Yaz back to his familiar haunt in front of Fenway Park’s storied “Green Monster.” He played like a frisky young rookie instead of a fourteen-year veteran when the Red Sox returned to the World Series that year. The Red Sox again came up just a bit short: Yaz made the last out of a hard-fought Game 7, giving the championship to the “Big Red Machine” from Cincinnati, and he’d repeat that feat in 1978, during a dramatic one-game playoff against the New York Yankees after the two teams ended that season with identical records, tied for first place and forcing the one-shot, winner-take-all game.

Yaz retired from the game at age forty-four, in 1983; he was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility and the Red Sox retired his jersey number 8 in 1989 (at the time, only the fourth retired number in team history, placing him in the company of Joe Cronin, Bobby Doerr — who is currently the oldest-living Hall of Famer — and the immortal Kid, Ted Williams).

So as you can see, for a baseball and Red Sox fan like me, my extended family did indeed find a special birthday gift for me. I’ll give you a last look, one that will also give you a look at the wallpaper I use on my computer screen — its creator is central to our next topic …

Long-time readers in this space may remember I also have a handful of close friends; we’ve been together for over thirty-five years now and we try to stay in touch as much as possible. It’s not as easy as one might think, given we’re now scattered across the Eastern Seaboard. One of these amigos who reside closest to me is someone to whom you’ve previously been introduced a time or two: Mike Dudley, who was best man at my wedding, and is the best man in just about every group in which he participates.

When Mike and I carve out time to get together, he typically shows up with either books he’s read that he thinks I might enjoy borrowing, or books he hands to me as gifts. Here’s the cover of one of Mike’s most recent finds:

This hardcover, copyrighted in 1946, is inscribed in a feminine hand on the inside to “Jimmy Asher” and dated “February 28, 1949.” One wonders how many hands this book has passed through and how many locations it has occupied in the almost eight decades since Jimmy Asher received it as a present.

It’s a prose story interspersed with black-and-white spot illustrations. Some illos are taken from Caniff’s Terry run. As three examples: the image on page 51 was lifted from the second panel of the March 23, 1936 strip; page 75’s art came from the last panel in the September 25, 1937 installment; and page 58’s picture is from the final panel of the April 11, 1936 daily. The latter is shown below, and if you compare it to that April 11th Terry you’ll see a certain amount of re-inking has gone on (look at Burma’s face, for example) …

Some of the illustrations are original to the book, but are clearly not from Caniff’s hand. I speculate they were done by longtime Caniff associate Ray Bailey, but so far I’ve yet to find corroboration of my theory.

The plot of the text story is an interesting mash-up of Terry plotlines and spans much of Caniff’s time on the series. It begins with backstory about both Terry Lee (age seventeen as we meet him here) and his traveling companion, Pat Ryan. Terry “had been reared by his grandfather Cyrus in a small Midwestern town.” Following his grandfather’s passing, Terry had stumbled upon the old man’s mysterious map promising “Manchu treasure.” He then sent a telegram to Ryan (“who had traveled extensively throughout China as a salesman and trouble-shooter for Cyrus’s importing firm”) and the two adventurers found themselves in the Mysterious East, where there was no treasure, but plenty of adventure, to be found.

Teamed with Connie, the trio crosses paths with Burma and continually cross figurative swords with Captain Judas. In a surprise revelation it turns out Pat is a member of the Secret Service, on Judas’s trail, and eventually Pat leaves his compatriots to track down the elusive Captain. Connie and Terry also part company, just in time for the book to finish with Terry earning his pilot’s wings at an air base run by Phil Corkin (“He’s a former Flying Tiger, and what a man!” one of Flip’s men informs Terry. “If he can fly like he can give orders, the Jap air force better give this field a wide berth!”). Nurse Taffy Tucker is also in the mix, as this image shows (again, it’s a lift from the August 8, 1942 Terry daily strip):

The story ends with Flip giving Terry his “Pilot’s Creed” speech, but just as the artwork in the book differs from that in the comic strips, the “Creed” text has also been subtly reworked. In that inspirational October 17, 1943 Sunday page, Flip warns Terry, “Don’t ever let me catch you being high-bicycle …” whereas in the book Flip says, “don’t ever let me catch you playing hotshot …”. In the book Flip drops the lighthearted reference to the Lord of the Underworld he used in the comic when he said, “You’ll get angry as the devil at the Army and it’s so-called red tape …”

It’s a fun “alternate universe” version of Terry Lee and his adventures, one I’m indebted to Mike for providing me. I’d heard of this book’s existence, but until this year had never owned a copy. It’s a pleasure to have it now, and on the remote chance he’s out there to read this, Jimmy Asher, I promise your book is in good hands!

— 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.

#

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.

#

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 …