Pt. 2: Darkness sets in

After the humor of the past two weeks’ transitional comics, a darkness sets in over Freedom as a new character is introduced. Jonas Crabtree, the “meanest man in town,” expresses his doubts to Stub about Tiny having saved a little girl from attack by wolves (in a previous sequence). He wishes the worst on Goodman’s Irish wolfhound.

Also introduced is the animal-loving ex-con Jerry Dor. After hearing his story, Stub puts him to work as stage manager for Yolo’s upcoming benefit performance. Danger comes Tiny’s way and Crabtree begins menacing Jerry, who shows a quick temper in defending his patron, editor Stub Goodman.

MM072250 BW TH cc 100MM072950 BW TH cc 100MM080550 BW TH cc 100

An interesting detail in these strips shows that in the time between the July 22 & 29 comics, Stub has returned the bantam car and gotten his hot rod back from the shop.

Yolo, Part 1

Following a week-long promotional blitz (see December 6, 2015 post), “Mitzi McCoy” finally launched in the Grand Rapids Press, Kreigh Collins’s local paper. It appeared on Saturdays, running in black and white as a one-third pager. The timing was a bit awkward as plans were already in place for “Mitzi” to transition into “Kevin the Bold.” Nonetheless, appearing in an additional newspaper meant more revenue for Collins.

The promotional ads promised adventure, dramatic artwork and eye appeal and Kreigh delivered on all counts (and then some). The strip’s last full sequence featured Yolo, a Moroccan beauty who was headed to Hollywood. As the Yolo character is introduced, editor Stub Goodman is taking his car in to the shop.

Tellingly, Stub’s mechanic lives “way out in Ada,” the town in which Kreigh Collins had built his home. These two comics served as a light-hearted, humorous transition between the thrilling conclusion of the previous sequence (The Counterfeiters, in which Stub’s old hot rod had taken quite a beating) and the drama that was yet to come in the next ten comics.

MM070850 BW TH cc 100MM071550 BW TH cc 100

A cute detail in the fourth panel of the July 8 comic shows a puppy sitting by Tiny’s side and looking on in admiration. The July 15 comic has an appearance by Clancy, a recurring policeman character whom has taken exception to Stub’s driving.

On the Hard

Plenty of action and adventure lay behind; a proposed ocean crossing promised further excitement ahead. Once home, the Marlins reunited with their old friend Pedro, who almost seems to have anticipated Heather’s upcoming journey. These comics ran November 14, 21 and 28, 1971. With only 13 more “Up Anchor” comics to come before Kreigh Collins retired, it seems doubtful that Heather ever made it to Europe.

UA 111471 OA

UA 112171 Th 300 qcc

UA 112871 Th 300 qcc

Pedro is a character with a familiar face. As with other characters Kreigh illustrated, his doppelgänger was a friend of Kevin Marlin in his earlier incarnation as Kevin the Bold. Whereas Kevin has aged from one comic strip to the next, Pedro has not. Maybe Pedro’s secret is the Italian beautician’s powder.

KTB 122858 TH 300 QCC

(KTB from December 28, 1958)

Surviving the Squall

Heather and crew managed to survive “a notorious Lake Erie black squall,” and despite the trauma, Jane Marlin has an idea for Heather’s next journey, which comes as quite a surprise. It seems her trip to the beauty parlor was quite rejuvenating.

Below are the comics that ran from October 24 until November 7, 1971. They are all silver prints, which Kreigh would receive from the NEA as a last chance for proofing before the comics were published. Some of the proofs he received were of better quality than others, but the nicer ones are almost as crisp as images of the original artwork. When “Up Anchor” appeared in print, it was almost always as a one-third page; the proofs have the bonus of including the topper strip “Water Lore.”

UA 102471 BWS 300 qcc

UA 103171 BWS 300 qcc

UA 110771 BWS 300 qcc

With the storm behind them, skipper Kevin Marlin remembers an incident when a “lunatic gunman” tried to hijack Heather the last time they plied Lake Huron’s waters. That sequence is unfamiliar to me, but while surfing online I did come across the episode (August 10, 1969) from that chapter of “Up Anchor.”

UA 081069

Homeward Bound

When Kreigh Collins scuttled “Kevin the Bold” and launched “Up Anchor,” he had a fresh start with a new theme. After nearly 20 years of Kevin’s 15th-century exploits, the action was now set in the 20th century. Most of it took place aboard Heather, with a fictionalized version of his family serving as crew.

Much of what was depicted in the new comic was inspired by events the Collinses experienced while cruising the Great Lakes and beyond. In 1966, Heather returned to her home port after a nearly two-year absence. Much of the journey was chronicled in a series of ten articles that appeared in the Grand Rapids Press, much the way blog posts are written today. The articles were illustrated by Kreigh and written by wife Theresa. Later, the articles were adapted into a narrative, “The Wake of the Heather,” which appeared in The World of Comic Art, a trade journal. Eventually, the journey became the basis for one of the final sequences in “Up Anchor.”

Surviving newsprint copies of “Up Anchor” are not very common, but I as able to piece together nine consecutive comics from a variety of sources. There are black and white “silver print” proofs, color comics from the newspaper, and photograph of a piece of original art.

The action begins with the comic from October 3, 1971.

UA 101071 Th 300 qcc

UA 101771 Th 300 qcc

UA 103171 BWS 300 qcc

Here is Theresa’s description of the foul weather as it originally appeared in “The Wake of the Heather:”

Nearing Buffalo, we passed through an impressive fruit belt with vast orchards on both sides. Here homes line the canal banks. We had been underway a month and it had rained only once. We reached the North Tonawanda boat yard just as one of the fiercest squalls we had ever experienced hit. The next morning the Heather was rigged, and by noon her masts were once more in place and she was ready to sail again.

Kevin the Scandinavian

SeriemagasinetSolohaefte_1975_23  KTC Tom Mix Comicbook cvr.jpg

At some point in the 1970s, “Kevin the Bold” was published for a market in Norway. I have no information about the comic book shown (above, left) other than his new sobriquet translates as “fearless.”

Another European market for American golden- and silver-age comics was Sweden. The wild west was a uniquely American subject that appealed enough for a comic to be assembled from various western-themed sources. Dating from 1953, the comics inside the beautifully-printed “Tom Mix with Buffalo Bill” ranged from classics (“Tom Mix,” “Frisco Kid,” “Buffalo Bill,” and “Lash LaRue”), to dense one-pagers (“De Dog Med Stövlarna På” [translation: They Died with their Boots On] and “Slaget vid [Battle of] Little Big Horn”) to the forgettable (“Ugh,” a silent comic featuring a native American girl). Also included, rather inexplicably, was “Kevin the Bold.” Maybe the comic’s connecting theme wasn’t the wild west — perhaps it was horses. At any rate, “Kevin” was the only American comic renamed in Swedish (here called “Roland den Djärve” — which indeed translates to “bold”.

KTC CB p02-03

The “Kevin” sequence covers three and a half comics that ran at the tail end of 1951 — a memorable sequence where Kevin fights Baron von Blunt to the death. Interestingly, the comics aren’t simply reprints of tabloid pages. The artwork has been edited quite a bit. Throwaways aren’t the only panels that disappear, and a few other panels are expanded with line work that isn’t a very convincing imitation of Kreigh’s. The comic ends abruptly — in fact, the next one in the sequence (January 6, 1952) is a cliff-hanger (literally!).

 

Australian Editions, Part 2

A third publisher of “Australian Edition” comic books was Atlas. The comics Atlas published came out later than those put out by Tip-Top and Thriller, and they seem to be better organized — the comics run in sequence without the randomness that occurred in some Tip-Top titles.

KTBCB 13 01 cover

The comics may run in sequence but the material in No. 13 (April 11–August 22, 1954) is older than that which is found in No. 14 (November 8, 1953–March 28, 1954). I found these titles on an eBay and was fortunate to win the lot of them for less than $20.00. They were listed by a seller in Australia, and don’t turn up very often — maybe once a year.

KTBCB 14 01 cover

 

Australian Editions, Part 1

Many U.S. Golden Age comics were printed and distributed in Australia throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Tip-Top and Thriller were two publishers that first brought Kreigh Collins’s comics down under. Tip-Top No. 3 features later “Mitzi McCoy” comics, and No. 4 covers the opening sequence of “Kevin the Bold.” I’m not sure which comics are found inside the pages of No. 5; No. 6 has a hodge-podge of “Mitzi” (from 1949–50) and “Kevin” (1952) with no logical sequencing. Apparently the target demographic wasn’t overly concerned with continuity. The 24-page books would typically feature 20 Sundays’ worth of tabloid versions of the comics, plus the cover and a couple pages of ads.

These “Australian Editions” are highly sought after due to their affordable prices and unique covers. The covers repurposed dramatic panels from the comics with backgrounds and dialogue eliminated (as shown in Thriller No. 24, which uses the opening panel from the December 24, 2950 “Kevin”).

KTB Comicbook 24LgKTB 122450 HA 72 P1

Foreign Tongues

When it was launched in 1948, “Mitzi McCoy” appeared in about three dozen newspapers. Nearly all were located in the United States, but two were from Canada — the Farmer from Winnipeg, Manitoba and Montreal’s La Patrie. Being situated in Quebec, “Mitzi” was translated into French and ran as the more Gallic-sounding “Mitzi Morot.” When the strip rebooted as “Kevin the Bold,” it continued to run in a translated form in the pages of La Patrie.

As the popularity of “Kevin” grew, its reach spread further and it was translated into other languages. Often, the comics ran after their original publishing dates, as was the case when “Kevin el Denodado” appeared in Argentina in a magazine called Tit-Bits. (Though it sounds like a girlie mag, it was actually the Argentinian version of an eponymous British weekly first published in 1881).

“Kevin” eventually made his way to South Africa and was translated into Afrikaans, as shown in this comic from 1965.

KTB 1965 09.12 afrikaans

The comic was also repackaged into comic books for overseas markets, and besides the relatively common examples from Australia, it was translated into Norwegian and Swedish for Scandinavian readers. (More on the comic books later).

[French “Mitzi Morot” and “Kevin the Bold” images at top of post courtesy of Encyclopédie de la Bande Dessinée de Journal au  Québec 1918-1988]

New Year/Old Gear

After acquiring my first comics — a two-year run of “Kevin the Bold” — I decided I should publish a book somehow. First, I needed to figure out the best way to get images of them, and since they were too large for my present scanner, I thought of using a camera stand. I had a vague notion of what one would look like, so I jury-rigged one out of some dowels and thin pieces of pine. 

Camera Stand

It held my camera, a Canon PowerShot A40. The camera wasn’t very sleek, but a grip that bumped out on its side helped secure it onto the camera stand. It was March, 2004, so shooting indoors made sense.

A40

Being a bit of a packrat, I still had some old light scoops and 3200K bulbs that dated back to college. I plugged them in by my camera stand and my ersatz photo studio seemed set. However, the resulting photos left much to be desired — my lighting was terrible!

KTB 010955 inside photo

I decided to try shooting outside; I figured the natural light would be perfect. It was now May, so going outside wasn’t out of the question. The light was ideal, but even a light breeze complicated everything.

KTB 020556 outside photo

Needless to say, I didn’t have a photo assistant. I could use weights to hold the comics in place, but having to deal with all these moving parts for each shot was less than ideal. It was a very slow, nerve-racking process — one gust and everything would be all over the back yard. Eventually I decided that shooting indoors on a sunny day near large windows was the most workable solution.

One way to say it would be that I didn’t know what I was doing; I prefer to think I was making it up as I went along. Regardless, it’s not the most confident way to start an endeavor, but I thought the most important thing was to just get started. I settled on using three 75-watt bulbs, my camera’s flash and the necessary color corrections in PhotoShop.

I shot my 105 comics, and proceeded to photograph new additions the same way, using a SanDisk card reader to  upload the images to my iMac. My collection grew slowly, which was just as well, since the process was so time-consuming. I recalled vaguely that higher-end cameras had lenses with optics that produced images whose edges were square but the A40 was obviously not in that category. So I also used PhotoShop to square up the images. But again, what a slow process.

Card Reader

A guy who worked at a place where I freelanced knew how to use the company’s tabloid-sized  photocopier as a scanner, and this seemed promising, but I wasn’t able to get permission to take advantage of this piece of equipment. As my comics collection grew, I become familiar with eBay, and I started looking into inexpensive tabloid scanners. Eventually I won an auction for a Microtek ScanMaker 9800XL. It makes nice square scans and easily accommodates half-page comics on its 12″ x 17″ bed. Lighting and wind are no longer problems. Even with its ultra-slow scanning speed, the $200 investment was well worth it. And it’s much more civilized than the old camera-stand process. The scanner is probably 15 years old but it still works fine (though I’ve had to purchase third-party software drivers to keep it functioning with the ever-changing Mac operating systems. I recommend VueScan from Hamrick software).

9800XL

At this point, I have most of my comics scanned (duplicating my attempts with the camera stand). Color-correction lags way behind, though I have nearly worked my way through the 100 “Mitzi McCoys” extant. And with any luck, a Mitzi McCoy book will be published in 2016.

Happy New Year!