Tribune Media Syndicate has announced that Rod Whigham will replace Frank McLaughlin as the artist for the classic comic strip Gil Thorp. The new work will appear on April 7th. Rod’s career has been in comic book and commercial illustration for the last 25 years working on comic book titles such as G.I. Joe, Star Trek, Men in Black, the Terminator, Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Punisher, The Justice League and The Flash.
Mary Elson, TMS managing editor, mentions that Rod has great skill in detail and “his grasp of human figures, sports action and varied artistic perspectives is exceptional.”
The strip was created in 1958 by Jack Berrill, who modeled the main character after baseball player Gil Hodges and Olympian Jim Thorpe.
Frank Bolle sure didn’t last long in that gig.
The grind of a daily comic strip has eaten men up. I don’t know if that’s true for women…Lynn Johnston continues to hold strong.
Aren’t there enough new resources to go to? Is there really that huge of a demand for classic strips out there? I’m honestly asking…this isn’t meant as a jab towards Gil Thorpe, Mr. Whigham, or Mr. McLaughlin. I just wonder what affect clinging to relic strips has on an industry that already seems to be on shaky ground.
Or they could just let the strip die, time has passed on.
I’ve admired Lynn Johnston for a long time, despite the fact her the theme of her strip clashed with my personality. She has always had a sentimental bend to her writing, but now she’s stagnated. The fact that she’ll no longer have her characters aging is a sign she’s been doing this for too long.
That’s what I mean, Monty. Couldn’t they just let it go and replace it with something fresh?