Calling Dr. Bald

Saturday Weekly Load.

For the last two years I have been selling my fifties comics on eBay, with quite some success. This summer I will start clearing out all the newspaper strips that I have used for this blog over the last ten years. I have scanned everything that I need and will still be able to do the blog, but all the paper needs to go sometimes, so why not now. To see how it would work, I have been trying out several methods of selling. Listing them as singles, as lots. At this moment I have a couple of lots on eBay, including a nice run of 1964/65 New York Journal-American six page sections, which include Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Ripley's, Juliet Jones, Snuffy Smith, They'll do it everytime, Ponytail, Scamp, Hi and Lois, The Phantom, Buz Sawyer, Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales: Mary Poppins/Those Calloways, Monkey's Uncle/Cinderella/Dumbo, Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon, Dr. Kildare, Popeye, Mr. Abernathy, Donald Duck, Bringing Up Father, Mickey Mouse, Steve Canyon, Let's Sew, Archie and Little Iodie. Some of which have appeared here (or will appear here) and some which are too popular and collected for me to use (but making the sections worth more, like Blondie or Archie or the Disney strips). It also has Ken Bald's Dr. Kildare, a forgotten strip by a golden age comic book artist who turned to newspaper strips with this doctor soapie and later became famous as the artist on Dark Shadows. Dr. Kildare is fully in the 'photorealistic' style and some of the figres and faces suggest to me that Bald either worked as an assitant to Stan Drake on The Heart of Julia Jones or used some of the same models for his photo references.

Added a couple more from the same run.

Paging Dr. Bald

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Ken Bald was a pretty boy artist, who did a lot of romance comics for Stan Lee in the forties. He is best known for creating the Dr. Kildare strip in 1962 and fans remember his Dark Shadows strip from the end of his career as well. Bfore Dr. Kildare, he did another soap strip calles Judd Saxon, which ran from 1957 tight up until the day Kildare started. Even though the strip was daily ony, the end run suggest the conclusion might have come on a sunday. We just don't get to see it.

In the early fifties his career is a bit more of a mystery. Jerry Bails' unmissable Who's Who tells us he did work for bland comic companies ACG and Fawcett, but that is not nearly enough to account for all his work or income. He may also have done some advertising work, but Bails unfortunately doesn't give dates for the samples he mentions.

I did ran across one signed newpaper ad for a product called Noxzema, though. Usually, when I find an add such as this, I can get a few more in black and white from NewspaperArchive. But o such luck this time. It must have been a very limited and short run ad series. But he did get to sign it and that was pretty special in that time.

I did find one other strip, mentioned by Bails: it appears Bald returned to Timely/Atlas to do a story for the oneshot World's Greatest Songs. Unsigned, but one you know he is in there, it is obvious which one is his.