Wayback Whensday – There and Back Again

But we’ll start with someone not so enamored of the golden oldies.

A letter writer to The (Boulder, Colo.) Daily Camera argues against legacy/zombie strips:

Quantity isn’t the same as quality. The camera editor, John Vahlenkamp, on Sunday, Aug. 18, explained and attempted to justify the changes in the Sunday comics with a, “more is better,” argument. A buffet of bad food doesn’t make it good.

The average age of Boulderites is 27.2 (2022) and Boulder County 37.2. Over 1/3 of Boulderites are between 15 and 24. Yet many of the added comics are older than about half our population. Basset Fred originated in 1963. Dennis the Menace was 1953. Peanuts and Beetle Baily came out in 1950. Blondie? Almost 100 years ago in 1930. Most of the rest originated in the 1970s and 1980s. Several of the original artists are dead…

… I know there are more important issues: road diets, airport, housing and development, etc. But can’t we at least have comics that reflect the artists and humor of this century? I’ll happily have a smaller menu of choices that I can actually swallow.

On to the waybacks.

In one of Betty Brown, Ph.G.’s most harrowing 1935 continuities, the plucky blond pharmacist faces down a gang of ruthless narcotics peddlers who are forcing her at gunpoint to fill their forged prescriptions. If she refuses their demands, they’ll throw a vial of acid into the face of Dimples, the adorable abandoned baby left on her doorstep. Undeterred, Betty manages to infiltrate the gang by pretending to be a mob moll with romantic designs on Diamond, the lead thug. Then, she tips off a team of G-men who show up, disguised, to her staged wedding to Diamond as her bridesmaids in drag...

Sadly, for American newspaper readers at the time, these action-splashed adventures didn’t play out on the comics pages of the Chicago Tribune or the New York Daily News. Instead, they riveted the readers of Drug Topics, a weekly industry publication for pharmacists and druggists.

Gorgeously drawn and plotted by Smilin’ Jack creator Zack Mosley and later by future Sparky Watts creator Boody Rogers (both working under the pseudonym Cliff Terrell), the strip, which ran from 1934 to 1948, is every bit as engrossing as Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy and as zany as Al Capp’s Lil Abner.

Blessedly for comics lovers, [Hogan’s Alley publisher Tom] Heintjes has now lovingly preserved, edited and annotated the entire run of the ground-breaking strip in the beautiful new book “The Complete Betty Brown, Ph.G.: Her Full Story, 1934-1948” (Hogan’s Alley, $24.99).

Richard L. Eldredge interviews editor Tom Heintjes about the the comic strip, the cartoonists, and the book.

Eldredge: The strip started out in 1934 as Bob Steele, Ph.G., and was drawn by a guy named Grant Powers and it was kind of a gag strip, right?

Heintjes: Yes, and then a creative change was introduced and Zack Mosley took over the strip and Betty was introduced. Let’s say she staged a bloodless coup and Bob Steele was written out and Betty took over and it became Betty Brown, Ph.G. in August of 1934. Now, in 1933, Mosley had introduced what was originally a weekly strip called On The Wing that later became Smilin’ Jack. That strip became a phenomenon, a big hit that spun off into comic books and movies. Zack Mosley became a cartooning star and his [newspaper] syndicate did not want him signing his name to anything that wasn’t Smilin’ Jack. He was a hot property. So they forced him to come up with the pseudonym Cliff Terrell. That byline stayed on the strip until it ended in 1948.

From Wayback to the Here and Now and back again as Flash Gordon Meets The Death Patrol.

Of course when Dan Schkade introduced the Death Patrol (is this their first appearance or are they part of Flash Gordon lore?) my mind went back to the Military Comics comic books of the 1940s and Jack Cole’s and David Berg’s Death Patrol.

Brian Kane, the preeminent Prince Valiant scholar, and Gary Groth, the preeminent Prince Valiant book publisher have patched up their differences and the result will be a treasure for Hal Foster fans.

On his Hal Foster’s “Prince Valiant” Legacy Facebook page Brian has informed us:

I am happy to announce that I have just signed a 6 book publishing deal with Fantagraphics.

“Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant Sketchbooks: An Illustrated Memoir,” Volumes 1-6 will begin publication in 2025. If all goes to plan, there will be two books a year (Summer & Fall) for three years [emphasis added]. A special “Thank you!” to Rick Norwood for spearheading the negotiations.

This series began as an idea of mine in 2012. My plan was to collect as many of the penciled page layout sketches Hal Foster made for John Cullen Murphy from 1971-1979. I thought they would make a nice art book—I found 366 of them (77%). All but three of these will be printed at the full 8.5×11-inch size. The series also includes 40 original character sketches (also at full size), 577 text pages with panel-by-panel design notes and captions, 104 photographs, 123 private letters (most from Foster to Murphy), and much more. These are six 10.25×14-inch volumes, 144 pages each (864 pages), which contain 1,350 total images—all fully annotated by me.

The series is a deep dive into Foster’s creative process, his aesthetic, the people who shaped him, the events that drove his storytelling, his theories about art, homesickness for New England, and his crippling slow decline both physically and mentally…

The comic strips of the past have helped to define and shape the new comics of today. Without the iconic comics we’ve all grown to know and love, other artists wouldn’t have the inspiration to become comic strip artists themselves. For all their simplicity, comic strips have evolved into their own unique and quirky art form that fans around the world can’t get enough of.

In particular, comic strips that debuted in the ’80s have left a lasting impression on the comic strip world. New art styles and dynamics emerged from this era and have carried on into comic strips that still exist today. Some people who grew up with ’80s comic strips are still here to see the comics continue.

Remember a while back when I mentioned a “never was” comic strip? Here’s Jamie Lovett to remind you:

As presented by Vault in their press release, “the daily Kid Maroon comic strip focused on a hard-boiled boy detective who investigates horrendous crimes in his hometown of ‘Crimeville’. The series quickly attracted significant controversy, as the stories drew on Shepard’s nihilistic outlook, penchant for violence, and obsession with bathtub laudanum. The backlash against the series, coupled with the rising tides of the Comics Code, led to the strip’s cancellation after just 216 episodes. This caused Shepard to become completely disaffected with the comic book medium, and he would go on to bury all his original art in what is believed to be a field in South Dakota, location unknown. Despite all of this, Kid Maroon became a tremendous cult hit that has inspired underground and independent comics ever since.”

Now ComicBook.com gives us a preview of the retro comic.

Prepare to embark on a metafictional mystery in Kid Maroon, a new Vault Comics series from writer Christopher Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire, Iron Man, Doctor Doom), artist Victor Santos (Polar, Violent Love), colorist Mattia Iacono (Kid Venom, The Dead Lucky), letterer Andworld Design (The Many Deaths of Laila Starr), and designer by Adam Cahoon (The Nasty). Presented as a revival of a forgotten comic strip of the 1940s created by a cartoonist called Pep Shepard, the series sees a small-town boy detective outgrowing his innocuous local mysteries and heading for the city, where crime is more common and more serious.