Showing posts with label Rodlow Willard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rodlow Willard. Show all posts

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Goode Vibrations

Thursday Story Strip Day.

A couple of months ago I showed a Scorchy Smith Sunday by Rodlow Willard. On the whole the reaction of most of those who saw it wa that it was a lot better thn they were led to believe. Of course following Frank Robbins is hard for any artist. Before Rodlow Willard Edmund Goode had the same problem. Maybe even more so, because Willard at least had a unique and more humorous style of his own, while Goode tried to follow in Robbins' footsteps. Anyway, here are some more samples of both 'second rate' artists for you to enjoy. I wish I had some of Willard's successor A. C. Hollingsworth (or at least more than the original art samples I have seen and shared).



Thursday, September 15, 2016

Not Just A Pretty Page

Tuesday Story Strip Day.

Rodlow Willard's Scorchy Smith is not much collected or appreciated. But if he hadn't been following in the footsteps of greats such as Frank Robbins, he might actually have been appreciated more.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Mr. Smith Goes To The Moon

Friday Comic Book Day.

Rodlow Willard was never as good an artist on Scorchy Smith as Noel Sickles, Bert Christian or Frank Robbins before him, or even A.C. Hollngsworth and George Tuska after him. So I've always managed to resist the urge to scan any of his eight years on the strip. But when someone has done the work for you, it's a lot easier. Here is a run of this long forgotten strip from one of those reprint comcis in the late forties. During his run, he changed Scorchy from an aviator to an astronaut, thus producing one of the earliest astronaut strips, which were so big in the fifties.











Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Secret Ingredient

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Rodlow Willard stopped drawing Scorchy Smith after several years in October 1953. For a week the feature was taken over by someone working in Willard's stylem but since Willard had signed and this artist didn't and since the revious storyline had finished and this one seems like a bridge to the new harsher style of the next artist, I don't think it is him. My guess is, it is probably some AP staff artist, maybe even Morris, who took over the strip in the late fifties and early sixties after George Tuska left. Anyway, after a week A. C. Hollingsowrth starts and he turns it into a very heavily drawn space opera.