What Might Have Been – Return of the Dragon
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It’s Spring 1982 and The Legend of Bruce Lee by Sharman DiVono and Fran Matera has debuted on the comics pages.
But five years earlier the legendary comic masters Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles had joined forces to prepare samples of their version of the comic strip Bruce Lee.
Noel Sickles revolutionized daily black and white comic strip art in the middle of 1930s Adventurous Decade. And with Milton Caniff’s assistance on scripting Scorchy Smith became, and remains, a highlight of the art form.
The team, with Sickles assisting on art, did the same with Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates of the same time period. While Sickles soon left for greener, less aggravating, pastures, Caniff took Sickles innovations and ran with it; spawning a multitude of disciples in the process. One of those being the aforementioned Fran Matera.
Which brings us back to Bruce Lee.
In 1977 the team re-formed and produced a couple weeks of comic strips featuring the martial arts star. A Sunday Bruce Lee sample Caniff and Sickles strip was featured here in a previous What Might Have Been installment. Now two weeks of daily strips have been revealed.
A sexy villianess, an All-American boy, and Far East intrigue; yep gotta be Caniff.
From The Billy Ireland by way of Drive-In Theater of the Mind are two weeks of dailies.
Bonus Sickles – the 1933 Writer’s Digest illustrations.
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