Strip Me, Kate

Thursday story Strip Day.

Here is something I had never seen before (or since). An adventure strip that ran from 1967 to 1972. At first I thought it might have been dawrn by Sheldon (Shelly Moldoff, but it appears to be the work of a Jerry Skelly. The strip was written by his wife Hale, with the help of Archie Goodwin. In his entry of the Who's Who of Comics, it says he wrte this strp from 1966 to 1970.

Fly By Night Boy

Wednesday Advertising Day.

On the scan sharing site www'comicbookplus.com I found a folder of the Captain Ben Dix ad series from the mid forties. Although itdoesn't seem to be the work a know artist, it is remarkeble for the quality of the art and the storytelling. I added a couple of color scans of my own, which seem to be from the month preceding the existing run.

And oops... it turns out that the black and white run came from my own earlier post! Well, at least I saw that someone left a message there: "The author of Capt. Ben Dix was Erwin M. Solms...my father." I'd love to hear more about that, kind poster.

Sappo, Not The Sailor Man

Ruesday Comic Strip Day.

This is a placeholder. I came across a nice set of Popeye Sundays from 1939. Unsigned, they probably are by Doc Winner, who replaced the recntly deceased Elsie Segar for a shot time before the new 'offcial' team was installed. I have never scanned any Segar pages because they are all very nicely reprinted in several editions. But these few, made so shortly after Segar's death are less often seen. And as far as the Popeye pages go, probably justly so. Under Doc Winner, Popeye's adventures were quite dull and homely. I don't particulary lie the almost twenty year run that follwed that, but what I have seen fom those strips is better than the Winner ones. But I do have a soft spot for Sappo, who started out life as Popeye's precursor and remained in the background of the strip when the spinach eating sailorman arrived. After a while, Sappo was given his own strip as a topper to the Popeye Sunday page and that was pretty impressive as well.

Under Winner, Sappo kept his topper spot and for a while he had an interesting soryline about Sappo visiting Reversia, a country where everything is done the other way around. The gags are easy, but the concept is thrilling. Unfortunately, I have not yet finished scanning the strips, but eventually they will end up here with this lonely one I did manage to get ready. The first is an earlier one - by Segar.