Month: December 2024

Legends of Christmas (3)

My guess is that the tales featured in the three-week LEGENDS OF CHRISTMAS comic strip were stories Kreigh Collins had come across during his extensive historical research. The first week’s comic were unusual, and did not really hang together, but they certainly presented a view of Christmas that is completely absent today.

The longer story of Peter that ran over the strip’s final two weeks has better continuity, but is still quite unusual. While it may be a story Collins came across in his research, I wonder how much of it was his own. Like Peter, Kreigh was an only child; both were extremely devoted to their mother. Kreigh’s father worked as a construction engineer, and while he often moved his family with him as his work took to various parts of the United States, at other times he was away from home an extended period (like Peter’s father).

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I have never seen printed examples of this comic. While the quality of these comics is not so great, at least they all have been preserved digitally. Season’s greetings — only 113 shopping days ’til Christmas!

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For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.

Legends of Christmas (2)

The second week of Kreigh Collins’ daily LEGENDS OF CHRISTMAS comic featured an easier-to-follow legend. It starred Peter, a young boy trying to care for his ailing mother while his father was away.

Speaking of legends, joining the bastions of journalism that appeared last week (The Manhattan Mercury, Hazleton Standard-Speaker and Terre Haute Star) is the one and only Kingston Daily Freeman.

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The medicine Peter brought his mother worked wonders — she looks radiant!

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For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.

Legends of Christmas (1)

Kreigh Collins’ comics were familiar to readers of Sunday funnies, and periodically there were discussions with his bosses at the Newspaper Enterprise Association about changing MITZI McCOY or KEVIN THE BOLD into a daily. Although these plans never came to fruition, in 1965 Collins illustrated a short-lived seasonal daily for the NEA called LEGENDS OF CHRISTMAS.

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Running in various small-market papers that were typical for the NEA, the LEGENDS OF CHRISTMAS comics are rather curious, and despite their yuletide theme, there was room to squeeze in a little anti-Soviet Cold War-era commentary (December 8). Take that, Brezhnev!

A tip of the cap to Alec Stevens of Calvary Comics for sending these comics my way!

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For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.

The Mountebank’s Lions (continued)

At each others’ throats just moments before, Kevin and Karl are now completely aligned.

The short chapter’s quick pace continues, and with Brett’s lion cub/baby switcheroo, the story begins to transition to Kevin’s next adventure.

Before Kevin’s lady friend gets a chance to share it, her story comes alive!

This story line would continue in the pages of the Monomonee Falls Gazette. KEVIN THE BOLD debuted in issue No. 109 (January 14, 1974), which featured Kreigh Collins’ artwork on the cover. For the next six months, KEVIN ran on the gazette’s back cover, and continued inside until the demise of the publication four years later.

In case you can’t get your hands on MFG issues 109–232, the next dozen or so KEVIN THE BOLD chapters are collected in the book Kevin the Bold: Sunday Adventures. The 154-page collection, about 97% of which was compiled from BW syndicate proofs, is available on Amazon.com.

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For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.

Brett and the Lions

This past week, Thanksgiving was celebrated here in the USA. It is traditional for the professional football team I grew up rooting for, the Detroit Lions, to play on Thanksgiving Day. One thing I am especially thankful for is my close relationship with my brother Brett, Kreigh Collins’ eldest grandchild. Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Brett was originally a Lions fan, too. Here, Kevin the Bold’s ward, Brett, stars in the short story arc that follows.

I originally posted this sequence a few years back. This “encore presentation” is due to the unfortunate circumstances my brother finds himself, battling a very nasty form of cancer—I’m currently helping his wife while he is hospitalized.

The five episodes that will appear were all taken from the Chicago Sunday Tribune, and although they are a bit past that newspaper’s prime years (as far as reproduction and printing of Sunday comics is concerned), they are beautiful examples nonetheless. This early chapter—KEVIN THE BOLD’s 17th—immediately precedes the episodes that ran in the Menomonee Falls Gazette.

As noted in the opening caption, the action is set in 1491. The year is somewhat arbitrary—my feeling is that it just serves to peg the action as occurring just before Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to the New World. It was a busy year for Kevin—the strip’s three previous chapters also took place in 1491. These were the first times a specific date was referenced for KEVIN THE BOLD’s action.

This sequence also kept Kevin busy—quite a bit of action was packed into its five episodes, which lacked the longer exposition normally found at the beginning of a chapter.

Having just arrived, Kevin makes immediate impressions on both the town’s law and order man and his pretty female friend. The jealous Swiss guardsman insults Kevin and moments later they square off to fight. Oh, and there are lions!

As quickly as it started, the fight ends, and the two combatants join forces in a common goal, finding the lioness’s cub. It’s all happened so quickly that I barely had time to look up the definition of mountebank—if he’s a charlatan, the townsfolk don’t seem to mind. Now back to the action!

In an odd form of payback, the lioness kidnaps a baby. Brett emerges as the voice of reason, the lion cub returns and… has Brett lost his mind?

To be continued…

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For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.