Doc's Docs

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

I got to know Michael Vassello online. He ran a Yahoo group about the comic book company Timely/Atlas, where Stan Lee was the editor. HIs enthousiasm inspired me and I got involved as well. After years of online talks and collaborations we met and immediately hit it off. Most of that was his doing, he is just a very sociable people person who is able to connect with lots of people. Still, wherever we looked we found new things in common (besides our age). And this keeps hapening. When I met him this year, I found out that he grows and bottles his own peppers, which happens to be a bobby of mine as well (the growing and consuming, not the bottling). Recently, he started buying Sunday sections from the the New York paper of his youth, this time following in my footsteps because I too had a passion for the New York Sunday. A couple of years ago I even went to the New York Public Library to look at their microfiche files of that paper, when they still had those in a special room on the first floor.

Of course Michael is a bit more thorough and singleminded than I am and his collection of The New York Sunday is already bigger than anything I ever have. He has started a facebook group about it, where he shows his scans. It is called The New York Sunday News Comics History Group and you have to apply for it - and then you can see your timeline fill up with scan after scan, so be prepared.

One of the strips Michael likes and shows a lot it The Ripples by George Clarke. It was best known for the panel version (as Side Glances)  that ran in many papers. But in the forties there also was a daily version, which I have also shown from time to time. But with Michael scanning away at the speed he does, most of my samples have become absolete. Certainly the black and white versions I hoarded because of a lack of better material.

Real Peachy

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

Here, along with some of the new Ripples I found, are some of the Aunt Peachy toppers George Clarke did.

Another Bumper Crop

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

When I was in New York a couple of years ago, I went to the Public Library to have a look for one of my favorite funny strips from the fifties, Bumper to Bumper by Gill Fox. Bumper to Bumper was an irregular half page Sunday only strip about a young married couple. He runs a garage and petrol pump. It is drawn in Fox's aproximation of the Hank Ketchum style, the same style used for his daily mini panel Denis the menace rip-off Wilbert.I've shown some samples of that forgotten (and not very funny) cheapo knock-off which ran for almost two years (in so few papers with such a low distribution that it can't have made Fox a lot). Gill Fox was one of those adaptable artist who seem to be able to work in any style (within a certain range). He started out as a Quality artist, aping the styles of their most popular artists (most notably Jack Cole), went on to the advertising agency Johnstone and Cushing, where he was a utility player in the humor category until he started orking with Dik Browne, taking over many of his (also often borrowed) styles. Later on, he assisted Browne on his advertising work, The Tracey Twins for Boy's Life and on Hi and Lois, although I have never been able to figure out in what period. He was so adept at mimicking Browne, that I can't tell who did what. In between he also did a couple of illustrations in a completely different style and a silly gag strip for an advertising newspaper. n 1961 he took over the daily panel Side Glances from William Galbraith, who had taken it over from George Clark decades before that. All in the same style, of course.

But all through it, Gill Fox remained fresh and never looked as if he was mimicking someone. Bumper to Bumper is a very good sample of that. It appeared in the New York Sun-News between 1954 and 1964 on an irregular basis and I am sad to say that I never managed to get a complete list because a. the New York Sun-News collection at the Public Library is not complete and b. I got sidetracked by all the pretty pictures in the issues they did have.

Someone still ought to do that, though.

The Clarke Effect

I found some more Ripples Sundays by George Clarke which I have added to an earlier post about this charming series by creator of Side Glances. But I am starting with one I found (just now) on my friend Mike Lynch's blog...

By George!

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

Earlier this year I showed a classy Sunday strip called The Ripples by daily panelist George Clarke. The best thing you can say about it is probably the worst as well, that his style was extremely cute. In his daily panels that always bothered me, but in the Sundays it seems to have been more at it's place. At least they gave us a chanc to see what a terrific artist he was.

As you can see by 1946, the strip itself had evolved into a more domesticated two tier family strip with a one tier topper about a parrot called Aunt Pechy's Pet Shop. In the paper I am scanning, the two were sometimes seperated.

 

All Kidding Aside

Saturday Leftover Day.

Clark started the daily panel strip Side Glances in the twenties. In the late thirties he started The Neighbors and left Side Glances to William Gailbraith - who left it to Gill Fox in the early sixties. In the meantime, Clarke continued The Neighbours until the early seventies on his own. I have never cared for either strip, the humor was to gentle and the style to swirly for me. In the forties Clarke added a Sunday strip to Our Neighbors, called the Ripples. The Sunday strip was dropped in 1948, but as far as I can see it is a lot better than the unadventurous daily.