The Praying Hero

 Saturday Leftover Day.

Two weeks ago I shared the main part of John Spranger's first story for The Saint. Here is the remainder, up to the introduction of the second story. As with the previous one, the quality of the micro-fiche scans isn't the best (and I understand there may be better ones available, just not on my newspapersite), but I think it is worth it to see Spranger's early developement from Bodyguard/Ben Friday/The Bantam Prince to the style he used in The Saint for most of the fifties. Fortunately, Simon Templar does not yet have that annoying goatee that Spranger introduced a couple years into his run.

Saint John's Day

Saturday Leftover Day.

The New York Herald Tribune is one of my favorite Sunday papers. They had a unique line-up of great strips and always published them in the three tier half page format - even well into the fifties, when it became more common to use three strips to a page instead of three. Last year I was able to photograph a set of 1953/1954 papers, with some of my favorites. But photo's are not as good as scans. Bog as they are, they are still only 72 dpi and the paper usually isn't flat. To see what I can salvage of that lot, I have tried to cleaan and correct one of the more impressive pages (The Saint, 1953-02-08) I photographed. I am only partly satisfied with the result, but the page itself is great.

End Of The Run

Saturday Story Strip Day.

So there it is. The end of my run of The Saint Sunday strips, drawn by Mike Roy with assistance by Jack Davis. Actually, I think he had left Roy's employ somewehre towards the end. The last Sunday certainly isn't his and I also have my doubts about the two before that. But what a run it was. Next week... Frank Thorne!

Working In The Art Mines

Saturday Story Strip Day.

More of Jack Davis assisting on Mike Roy's The Saint. What a marvelous run - and it is only getting better! In this run I see many faces that look more like Davis' later EC work than Mike Roy's various comic book and newspaper strip projects. Then again, he was probably wokring with other inkers and pencillers then. Follow the link to see for yourself.

Davis Visuals

Saturday Story Strip Day.

As defined last week, we are well into 'clearly by Jack Davis' territory here. Of course I do not now how much Davis learned from Mike Roy, but I see several of his faces, some of his inking style and more. MY guess is that Roy did the at that time normal sparse lay-outs and let his inker/background man do the rest.