Anyway, to paraphrase Churchy LaFemme: Wayback Whensday come on a Saturday this week.
The Lost Phantom
Longtime Phantom penciler George Olesen spent his summer seasons in Denmark. As a result, the Phantom strips make quite a trek, beginning as a script from Lee Falk‘s typewriter, to George Olesen‘s studio where he pencils the art, to Milt Snappin who lettered the work, then to Keith Williams or Fred Fredericks who ink the final panels.
All in all, they travel from Massachusetts to Denmark to New York to Massachusetts / New York Wow!
Schulz had a big year in 1946: He landed two jobs that would prove invaluable to his artistic development. The first job was as a letterer for a Catholic organization in St. Paul that published religious comic books to provide teaching materials for Catholic schools, churches, and youth groups. Through this work, Schulz became a fast, adept letterer…
In 1947, a forerunner of the Minneapolis Star Tribune published two of Schulz’s comics called Li’l Folks, a precursor to Peanuts. And from 1947 to 1950, the St. Paul Pioneer Press ran his weekly cartoon Li’l Folks by Sparky. Schulz was unsatisfied with these small victories. He wanted his work to reach a larger audience by being syndicated and sold to many markets….
In 1945, cartoonist Bill Woggon launched a newspaper strip [comic book feature] starring fashion queen Katy Keene. Starting in backup stories, within a few years she would have her own comics series… and then multiple series, plus one shots, annuals, and specials. Eventually, she reached a level of public attention that few comics characters get, certainly back then, her own live-action TV series. Then in 1946, with Katy Keene still at the start of her popularity, Woggon created another character, Dazzling Diamond Lil‘.
Comics are the combination of words and pictures that make you laugh, in the newspaper and online, or the comic book adventures of your favorite superhero, and so much more. Most comics fans and readers focus first on the art, but the words are equally important, and the visual presence of those words is an integral part of the unique medium of comics.
