In my previous post on George Wunder, I made mention of both Lee Elias and Ray Bailey. Elias was a strong second choice to take over Terry and the Pirates after Milton Caniff left the strip, and Ray Bailey worked for a time as Caniff's assistant on Terry, Male Call, and later, Steve Canyon. Both men enjoyed long active careers in comic strips and comic books.
Lee Elias' work in comic strips included a two year stint assisting Al Capp on Li'l Abner, and from 1952 until 1955 he illustrated Beyond Mars, written by science fiction author Jack Williamson. The unique thing about Beyond Mars is that it ran exclusively in the New York Daily News, and nowhere else.
Ray Bailey, started out assisting Gus Edson on The Gumps, before becoming Caniff's assistant. During 1942 and '43 he created and produced a present day western strip, Vesta West, followed by the aviation comic 'Bruce Gentry' for the New York Post Syndicate in 1945. In 1951, Bailey started 'Space Cadet Tom Corbett', a comic strip based on the popular science fiction novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein, written by Willy Ley. Tom Corbett would run until 1953. He would also illustrate several 'Steve Canyon' comic books in Dell Publishing's Four Color series.
Both gentlemen had a strong Milton Caniff influence evident in their work, and when needed (or desired) could produce a solid imitation of Caniff's general style.
Here is a quick look at Lee Elias and Ray Bailey -- two of many in the Caniff influenced artists working back in the day.
While others may strongly disagree, it is my opinion Friday Foster was the last great original continuity strip created for the US newspaper market. There were others which later created waves, such as Star Wars, The Amazing Spider-Man, etc,, but they were marketing extensions of previously established characters. Friday Foster however, created and written by Jim Lawrence, and strikingly illustrated for the majority of publication (January 1970 until February 1974) by the extraordinarily brilliant Jorge Longaron, was fresh and exciting, with no preconceptions good-or-bad established.
And I love it.
Back in April I did a series of three posts covering Longaron and Friday Foster, if you desire to scroll down and see even more of this strip and Jorge's artistry. There are lots of wonderful images in the posts.
Thankfully, there is a top quality collection (published by Ablaze in 2021) of the Sunday strips available for purchase online -- over three hundred pages and more than two punds of exceptional artistic quality -- a book which I heartily recommend.
Friday Foster didn't last as long as one would have desired but it certainly stood out from the crowd while it appeared, and much of that uniqueness is due to the striking and beautiful artwork supplied by Spanish comic master, Jorge Longaron. Here's a sampling of the strip scanned from online original art sources.
Roy Crane was one of the comic strip medium pioneers of the continuity strip, and more importantly, the adventure strip sub-genre. Adventure was part of Crane's general make-up it seems, for in his youth he spent time as a hobo traveling the country by rail, as well as being employed on a tramp steamer -- and later (while working on his strip) spent time with a circus as well as traveling to Cuba.
Crane started his career in comic strips in 1922 as an assistant to cartoonist H.T. Webster. In 1924, Roy launched Wash Tubbs, a strip focused upon a small Harold Lloyd lookalike employed as a grocery clerk. After four months of gag-a-day continuity, Crane sent Wash Tubbs on a treasure hunt in the South Pacific and the adventuring began. Wash's adventures thereafter (or more specifically, misadventures) continued to expand in danger and excitement to the point Crane needed to introduce a new character in the strip to logically help Wash Tubbs survive the goings on -- that character arriving in the form of a roguish soldier of fortune named Captain Easy.
In the 1940s, Crane was approached by King Features Syndicate to create a new creator owned strip for them -- the hook being they wanted Crane to come be their "Milton Caniff", whose popularity on the Terry and the Pirates strip was at an all time high. They also approached Frank Robbins with a similar pitch. Both men would develop new strips for King -- Crane's Buz Sawyer and Robbins' Johnny Hazard. What the syndicate failed to mention was they were also talking to Caniff, who would create Steve Canyon for King in the same time period, and who would receive the greatest amount of promotion from the syndicate.
Crane is best known for his use of "duo-tone" art boards to create amazing photo realistic effects in his work. Alex Toth greatly admired Crane's art, as did/do a large number of other artistic legends. He is considered a cornerstone of the comic strip industry and a master of the form. The final image here is an o…
For those unfamiliar with William Overgard's work, especially his brief time in comic books, here is an example of his lighter side -- "The Crisco Keed" -- which Overgard wrote and illustrated for St. John's The Three Stooges #7 in 1954, the same year he started his thirty-one year run on Steve Roper.
Even though this is a MAD inspired bit of tomfoolery, it still displays his solid Caniff-influenced inking approach and storytelling skills. Most of Overgard's comic book work was done for Lev Gleason Publications, under the direction of Charles Biro.
!954 was a precipitious year for the comic book industry. The US Senate hearings on the dangers of comic books upon the youth of America -- and the subsequent fallout and newfound negative perception of comic books -- greatly impacted the market. Lev Gleason would go out of business in 1956. St. John Publications, who published this story, managed to hold on until 1958, before it too went under, along with a multitude of smaller comic book publishers.
Overgard's good fortune in finding a steady comic strip gig just prior to the crash was indeed a blessing for his career, as well as allowing him to work within the same industry which had initially inspired him as a youth.
William Overgard passed away on May 25, 1990, at the relatively young age of 64 -- a sobering thought for myself as I am approaching that benchmark in a little over six months.
I'm really going to miss Butch Guice's pieces on cartoonists that he regularly posted on Instagram. He was an artist who loved and appreciated the history of the artform.
The last paragraph he wrote about William Overgard is now especially poignant. RIP.
#ButchGuice
www.instagram.com/butchguice/
![The X-Men and the Micronauts #2 (Feb 1984) cover pencils by Butch Guice and inks by Bob Wiacek. The cover shows the "X-Nauts"(Arcturus Rann; Huntarr; Marionette; Bug; Acroyear) vs the Micro-Men (Nightcrawler; Wolverine [Logan]; Storm; Colossus; Ariel [Kitty Pryde]).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4e4gwx3ovp6cl4fv6gbumrog/bafkreifoy5flaz6uhpxngl4scg4z7gf5ulkwf43fxlrippx5c2msqdpw2q)
