Terry And The Cowboys

Saturday Leftover Day. 

I ama bog fan of Ray Bailey, who worked as an assistant to Milt Caniff in the early forties and went on to do two daily and Sunday newspaper strips of his own; Bruce Gentry in 1945-1950 and Tom Corbett in the early fifties. After that he returned to Caniff (in a way) by becoming the main artist on Dell's Steve Canyon comic book series (it is rumored Caniff still did the heads himself, although it is clear Bailey could do those as well). What I didn't kno, is that he did a lot more at Dell (and later WEstern), who remained his main emplyer well into the sixties, working for such titles as Turok and Boris Karloff Mysteries. I am going to get as many of those pages and stories as possible. Here is one of the earliest, a nice little western he did in 1957. In fact, he contributed two stories to this issue (the last of the series) with John Buscema doing the third. This is the second one, which I found the most impressive of the two. It was another return for Bailey, who had done a Sunday only called Vesta West for the Chicago Tribune syndicate's Comic Book in 1943, while still working for Caniff.

The Way Back Machine

 Sunday Surprise Day.

In the early forties the Chicago Sun created it's own 'comic' book Sunday insert, te be folded from their regular pages. Like The Spirit, although it was folded in a different way to form a small three tier oblong booklet. In it were several regular series, but also a whole lot of material that was especially created to be more action/pulp oriented, suchs as Streamer Kelly and the spy series Mister X (by Bert Whitman and Bernard Baily). I got a lot of those for the western story that came along a bit later: Vesta West, originated by Fred Maegher but continued by Ray Bailey. You will find all of my samples if you follow the links. Once I got them my other favorite was a charming comedy strip by Milt Caniff's letterer, Frank Engli called Rocky. Not as sarcastic as the later B.C. bu a similar set-up, about a young boy and his family in Neanderthal times. 

In his profile at The Stripper's Guide (https://strippersguide.blogspot.com/search?q=engli) you can read more about him and see some more color samples of Rocky. It also mentions Looking back, which I had never seen. I always assumed Milt Caniff misremembered the title of Rocky when he mentioned it. It also says that Looking Back ran from December 30, 1945 to May 25, 1947.

But when I saw it recently, I flipped. Looking Back not a regular comic strip, but a half page cluttered drwing in the style of Sergio Aragonés in the later Mad and Caran d'Arche in France. Harvey Kurtzman and Mort Walker had also done a couple of these in Varsity, but it was not something you saw a lot. And here Frank Engli was doing it every week.

I went back to find the strip started on December 30, 1945 indeed and floowed it up to May 26, 1946, when the last half page gag apeared. After that it returned to a nine panel half page - very similar to what Rocky used to be. In fact I have to go back and check to see if they didn't use the same cast.

The last installment I found was April 6, so I have to go and check where the others are as well. Once I have them all I will do another post.

So here it is, the full run of Frank Engli's charming and unique half page gags of Looking Back.

An Array of Ray

Saturday Story Strip Day.

I found a couple more Tom Corbett, space Cadet Sunday I had not scanned before. This remarkable strip by former Milt Caniff assistant Ray Bailey is one of the best collected strips on eBay. I don't know if my promting of this strip (and Bailey's strip before that, Bruce Gentry) is the reason they have gon up in price so much - but even outside of eBay they are always sold quickly and at high prices. I will add these three to my longer post with all of the dailies and Sundays. If you like this sort of thing, you can also look for the aforementioned Bruce Gentry and for a special treat link to Vesta West, Ray Bailey's first solo strip (from 1942) and the propaganda booklet Blockbusters from Oil, which Bailey also did in 1942. Both the Vesta West tearsheets and the Bluckbusters booklet are on sale on my eBay page right now, if you want to have the real thing: https://www.ebay.com/sch/gerapeldoorn/m.html?item=153237068726&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

The City Of Family Love

Friday Comic Book Day.

All comic book fans know that the Spirit started as a weekly insert into papers, which was sold produced with Will Eisner along with Mr. Mystic and Lady Luck (and other features when those were replaced). Real comic book fans know that the so called Spirit section wasn't the only such a section in the US. It was tried by different packages as well, most notable the Chicago Sunday Comic Book which also had Bert Whitman's Mr. Ex, Ray Bailey's Vesta Wet and Frank Engli's Rocky amongst others. I have shown several samples of those, if you follow the links. But only a few people will know that the Philadelphia Record, the paper that ran the Spirit Section (as well as the Spirit daily comic strip) also had a second book insert, double the size of the Spirit section even (unless you count the years where they were the only paper in the US to carry the Spirit at double size). It was a funny section called Funny Book and it is interesting to comic and newspaper strip collectors because it was the place where The Family Circle artist Bil Keane did his first features almost ten years before he launched Channel Chuckles and fifteen years before his annoyingly sweet yet popular family showed it's face. There were other artists involved, which I will go into when I show the other two of my three copies. Both Silly Philly and Mirth Quakes ended up in the proper newspaper comic section in the early fifties.

Return To The West

Thursday Story Strip Day.

As long as we are doing westerns, I am reposting one of the prime sets of scans from my collection, a long and almost complete run of Ray Bailey's Vesta West. I didn't want to repost, actually, but I forgot I had already done so. My bad, hope sme of you will see it for the first time.

Vesta West was started by Fred Maegher for the Chicago Comic Boook section, a Sunday section you could fold into an oblong half sized 'comic book'. Although it had some established favorites, most of the strips were especially created for it, including Mr. Ex by Walt Whitman (and later Bernard Baily). I have shown earlier samples of Vesta West before and together they show Ray Bailey (who took over from Maegher after a few months) looking for a style. In 1943 he had joined Milton Caniff's studio and it shows. By this time, the half size comic book was changing and Vesta West was now filling a small comic book tabloid page as a 'normal' strip.