Kevin’s tournament skills paid off in the first round of the joust, but by taking the high moral ground he is setting himself up for possible failure.
Kevin’s virtue is matched by Basa’s treachery, but while Kevin is saved by Hugo’s unexpected confession, Basa meets his end at the hands of the angry mob.
As the story of the Field of the Cloth of Gold ends, another adventure begins.
For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.
Sir Basa sets his nefarious plan in motion, and De Cagnes smells a rat. As usual, Kevin remains calm.
Evil to the bone, Sir Basa reneges on his promise to pay Hugo—and he confuses the stableboy’s inability to speak with stupidity. Perhaps Hugo isn’t the only one Basa has underestimated.
In the August 26 episode, the “Ancient Code” is spelled out once again. From the beginning of his time with NEA, Collins had been instructed to repeat information critical to a story’s plot so that newspapers could pick up the strip at any time and start running it—and the same was true for readers. If they’d missed a sequence’s earlier episodes, they could be brought up to speed. The repetition might help newcomers, but to those following the action each week, the practice was no doubt a bit tedious.
For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.
At the summit arranged by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, King Francis I of France and King Henry VIII of England tried to outshine the other, with dazzling tents and clothes, huge feasts, music, jousting and games. The days were taken up with tournaments, in which both kings took part.
After the joust, Kevin was gracious in victory over his friend De Cagnes — but not everyone was so pleased, as the sourpuss Sir Basa is introduced.
“The Field of the Cloth of Gold” was the first sequence written by Kreigh Collins after a 13-month stretch of episodes written by Jay Heavilin. In fact, the episode above contains a line (paraphrased) that originally appeared in “Kevin the Bold” a decade earlier.
Returning to our current sequence, Kevin has the misfortune of staying at the same inn as his detractor, and he also meets a mute stableboy.
For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.
Last week I asked readers if their collections included any “Kevin the Bold” episodes that were missing in mine. This week a sequence starts using comic scans sent to me by my man in Rotterdam, Arnaud, with whom I traded a bunch of other “Kevin” scans (Nogmaals bedankt!). These tabloid comics were originally published starting in June, 1962, and were based on a historical event from 442 years earlier—the June, 1520 summit between England’s King Henry VIII and France’s King Francis I.
These first few episodes serve as a preamble to the main event, but the June 17 comic shown above is a favorite of mine because I have the original artwork in my collection.
In 2010, when I first found an image of the artwork online, it appeared as shown above. Sadly, by the time I saw it listed for sale four years later, the illustration had been cropped so it would fit in an 18″ x 24″ picture frame (below). It might have been damaged goods, but I bought it anyway (frame not included). One interesting detail is found in the panel in the lower left-hand corner, where Brett is holding Kevin’s sword. The sword is a photostat, pasted onto the original art—apparently as a time saver for the artist.
Featuring the complete run of Kreigh Collins’ first NEA comic, “Mitzi McCoy,” The Lost Art of Kreigh Collins, Vol. 1: The Complete Mitzi McCoy is still available! It can be ordered directly from me for $24.95 plus postage (contact me for shipping details at brianedwardcollins1[at]gmail.com).
For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.
Once I started collecting my grandfather’s comics, I came up with two goals: publish a book and collect them all. In 2018, “The Complete Mitzi McCoy” was published, so—halfway there!
Kreighs’ comics appeared in newspapers every Sunday from November 7, 1948 until February 27, 1972, about two and a half decades. Adding it all up—the 23 complete years, the two partial years, and the four times leap years resulted in a year having 53 Sundays (1950, 1956, 1961, 1967)—amounts to 1,217 individual episodes. WIth so many of them, it’s easy to see why I chose to publish a book first.
Admittedly, I had a great head start with so many of the episodes having been given to me by my uncle. But while my grandfather saved a lot of stuff, I do not have examples of all of the individual episodes. With all 99 MITZI McCOY episodes and less than half of the UP ANCHOR! comics, what I had focused on primarily was the missing KEVIN THE BOLD episodes, but I’ve recently been making progress on my collection of UP ANCHOR! episodes too.
At some point, I was clued into the existence of comic sections found online at newspapers.com, so there aren’t any episodes I haven’t seen—but these online versions are of varying quality and are in black and white.
As for the different formats available, my preference for obtaining digital images goes as follows: color half pages, color half tabloids, color tabloids, original artwork, black and white velox proofs, black and white tabloids, color thirds, black and white thirds, etc. Obviously, I prefer to have original hard copies of the episodes, but scans are just as good as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps someone could help me fill some holes in my collection with their scans—I’d be happy to trade.
The first hole in my collection, appears about a decade into KEVIN’s run: April 24, 1960.
A few months later, the October 2, 1960 episode draws a blank.Through 1958, I have full-sized (half-page or tabloid) versions of just about every comic, but by 1960, many of my comics are one-third page versions (sigh).
A previously published version of this post resulted in a reader sending me a bunch of scans to trade (Thanks, Arnaud!), but I’m still looking for a color version of the September 17, 1961 episode—and the one for June 23, 1963.
Here are the dates of the comics listed above:
April 24, 1960
October 2, 1960
September 17, 1961
June 23, 1963
Not bad for the first 18 years of my grandfather’s cartooning career—only 18 missing episodes left!
For the last three years of “Kevin the Bold,” I used to need quite a few, but a connection with a collector in New Jersey (Thank you, Dave!) has helped fill in a lot of the blanks. However, these still elude me:
January 2 , 1966
June 26, 1966
July 17, 1966
July 24, 1966
January 8, 1967
March 5, 1967
March 26, 1967
April 9, 1967
March 10, 1968
March 17, 1968
April 7, 1968
April 21, 1968
May 5, 1968
September 15, 1968
Dave has also helped me complete my collection of UP ANCHOR! strips, but there are quite a few still missing…
January 26, 1969
June 8, 1969
June 15, 1969
June 20, 1969
November 9, 1969
December 7, 1969
December 28, 1969
August 30, 1970
September 27, 1970
October 25, 1970
…especially from 1971 and 1972:
January 3–March 21, 1971 (12 episodes)
April 4–May 30, 1971 (9 episodes)
June 13–September 12, 1971 (14 episodes)
September 26, 1971
October 31–November 7, 1971 (2 episodes)
December 5–December 19, 1971 (3 episodes)
January 2–February 27, 1972 (all 9 episodes)
It looks like I’m missing about 32 episodes of KEVIN THE BOLD and 36 from UP ANCHOR! Do you have any of these in your collection? I’m more than willing to trade scans (or hard copies). If you’re willing to help, please leave a message here on my blog or contact me directly at brianedwardcollins1(at)gmail.com
Thank you! See you in the funny papers!
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For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.
My collection of my grandfather’s comics began when I acquired two complete years of Florida Times-Union Sunday half pages (1955–56). Thanks to a leap year, there were 105 episodes in all. That bit of good news was offset slightly by the middling print quality of many of the episodes. Below, the opening splash panel shows quite nicely, but by the third panel, skin tones are represented by near-solid patches of magenta ink. Whenever possible, I will post comics from other sources.
In last week’s introductory episode, the stage was set—London, 1515. Among a large crowd, Kevin witnessed the arrival by boat of a delegation from Venice, bound for a meeting with King Henry VIII. However, other business had brought Kevin to the city.
Kevin’s friend Stephen Moore is introduced; the handsome, friendly painter is obviously one of the good guys. On the other hand, we meet the conniving Sir Guy Thornberry. The two have the same intention, marrying the beautiful Marion Drake.
With King Henry having given his blessing to Thornberry, and Queen Catherine approving Marion’s own choice of a husband, quite a dilemma has been established. The Queen, Catherine of Aragon, was Henry’s first wife, but obviously not his last. This disagreement is a portent of real-life marital trouble down the road for the royals, and while Catherine’s demise is tragic, at least she did not suffer the fate of wives No. 2 and 5!
As the plot thickens, we learn that Thornberry’s vanity and jealousy is matched only by his ruthlessness. As with several other episodes from this story arc, the visual is upgraded to a crisp NEA proof—which in this case has a hole cut into it—likely the casualty a craft project undertaken by one of Kreigh Collins’ younger children or grandchildren (moi?). I guess those Times-Union halves come in handy after all.
For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.
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.
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.
This spring, I visited Uncle Kevin, who lives in the Ada, Michigan home in which he grew up. Visits are always a treat—besides visiting family, and the memories of my grandparents that come from staying in their old house, there is also so much of my grandfather’s artwork hanging on the walls (or recently dug out of old boxes and bins).
One bin turned up a copy of “NEA Sunday and Daily Comics.” It’s a 32-page, black and white tabloid, with the cover printed on a nice, coated stock and the interior pages on a lesser-grade paper. It’s a collection of NEA’s comics that was published by the syndicate each week. I have many examples of KEVIN THE BOLD excised from these issues, but only two intact copies of the publication.
The really sweet collage of the NEA’s comic heroes found on my other copy was no longer seen on the cover, but it was replaced by a KEVIN THE BOLD episode (promoted from the inside front cover). Who could complain? Not me, anyway.
Six-plus years ago, I posted the above copy of “NEA Sunday and Daily Comics.” I’m pretty sure it’ ha’s been my most-viewed post. Therefore, it seems appropriate to post this newly-acquired one in commemoration of this blog’s ninth (!) anniversary.
But first, I have a question. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m very intrigued by foreign language versions of my grandfather’s comics. Since I had a near-immediate answer the last time I asked this sort of thing, I’ll try again—is anyone aware of a German version of KEVIN THE BOLD? If so, please comment below or send me an email (brianedwardcollins1[at]gmail.com). Thank you!
Although the supplement was dated July 18, the Sunday episode of KEVIN it featured ran on July 24, 1960. (The supplement contains NEA’s daily comics from July 18–23 plus their July 24 Sunday-only features). This episode came from the middle of the Dover Pirates chapter.
Kevin is followed on page 2 by a Sunday tabloid episode of Vic Flint (Dean Miller/Jay Heavilin). Page 3 includes half-tabloid versions of Boots and Her Buddies and Babe ‘n’ Horace/Boots Cutouts, with Boots and Her Buddies dailes the next page (all by Edgar Martin).
Pages 5 and 6 feature V.T. Hamlin’s Alley Oop Sunday and dailies, followed by Merrill Blosser’s Freckles and His Friends Sunday and dailies on pages 7 and 8.
Pages 9 and 10 feature Captain Easy, by Lesley Turner (Sunday and dailies), followed by two pages of Sundays and dailies for J.R. Williams’s Out Our Way with “The Willets”.
Next up is Al Vermeer’s Pricilla’s Pop (Sunday and dailies), followed by a new NEA title on pages 15–16, Dick Cavalli’s Morty Meekle. Outside of Kreigh Collins’ work, I’m not much of an authority on comics, but Morty’s cap looks mighty familiar. Sure enough, this title later evolved into a strip I remember as a kid—Winthrop. (I wasn’t much of a fan).
The second half of the publication brings us seven days of Bugs Bunny, Russ Winterbotham and Art Sansom’s Sunday-only Chris Welkin Planeteer, and a “fun page” with several small strips including Tom Trick Fun Detective (credited simply to Dale).
On page 21 are six days of single-panel Our Boarding House with Major Hoople dailies, and on page 22, the Sunday tabloid, which includes Bill Freyes’ topper strip The Nut Brothers. Pages 23 and 24 include the single-panel comics Side Glances (by Galbraith), Carnival (by Dick Turner), and Short Ribs (by Frank O’Neal).
Pages 25 and 26 feature more single-panels: Carnival (Dick Turner), Short Ribs, plus Turner’s Sunday topper strip Mr. Merryweather. These are followed by Rolfe’s Brenda Breeze Sunday (with Otis as a topper) and several panels of Kate Osann’s Tizzie and Little Liz.
Pages 29 and 30 continue with more of Tizzie and Little Liz plus some Nadine Seltzer Sweetie Pie dailies and a couple left-ver Short Ribs. Bringing up the rear is seven days of Wilson Scruggs’s The Story of Martha Wayne.
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The Perfect Ninth Anniversary Gift!
“The Lost Art of Kreigh Collins, the Complete Mitzi McCoy” features the entire run of Kreigh Collins’ first NEA feature.
MITZI McCOY ran from 1948 to 1950 and showcased Kreigh Collins’ skill as an illustrator and storyteller. His picturesque landscapes, lovely character designs, and thrilling action sequences brimmed with detail and charm, and the strip’s ensemble cast rotated in and out of the spotlight taking turns as protagonists in the dozen story arcs collected in this volume. The last story collected in “The Complete Mitzi McCoy” is the narrative bridge that set Collins and his characters off on a new journey, beautifully told for the next couple of decades in the much-lauded adventure strip Kevin the Bold.
The collection includes an introduction by Eisner Award-winning author Frank M. Young, an Afterward by Ithaca College’s Ed Catto, and previously unpublished artwork and photos. Longtime comics artist Butch Guice also provides a new pin-up of the character Mitzi McCoy.
The book is available for $30. For domestic shipping, add $4; for international orders, please add $25 to cover first class shipping. To place an order, leave a comment below or email me at BrianEdwardCollins1[at]gmail.com, and I will give you PayPal or Venmo information. Thank you!
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For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.
Having recently celebrated a milestone birthday, today I present a 75-year-old comic section from New York Sunday Mirror (no, I’m not that old!).
As usual, Ham Fisher’s JOE PALOOKA ran on the front page, followed by Milton Caniff’s STEVE CANYON and MICKEY FINN by Lank Leonard. Next up are KERRY DRAKE (Alfred Andriola/Allen Saunders), SUPERMAN (Wayne Boring), an ad for Ludwig Bauman electric drill (boring in more ways than one), and Frank Miller’s BARNEY BAXTER IN THE AIR.
Then it’s the good stuff. No offense to THE FLOP FAMILY by Swan and Marty Links’ BOBBY SOX—I am, of course, referring to Kreigh Collins’ MITZI McCOY.
The June 5, 1949 episode of MITZI McCOY features the reunion between a runaway boy and his parents, and is notable for the absence of Mitzi herself. In lieu of the page from the Sunday Mirror comics section (which MITZI shared with a forgettable ad for Super Suds detrergent) is a version of the episode that I cleaned up for my MITZI McCOY book.
The second half of the comic section starts with a page with Roy Crane’s CAPTAIN EASY, drawn here by Walt Scott, and V.T. Hamlin’s ALLEY OOP, plus HENRY by Carl Anderson. Then it’s REX MORGAN, MD by Bradley and Edgington, BOOTS by Martin, and Merrill Blossar’s FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS (plus the topper strip HECTOR). Harry Hanan’s silent comic LOUIE, an ad for Camel cigarettes (I don’t think cancer sticks are advertised in the funnies anymore!), OUT OUR WAY by J.R. Williams, and OUR BOARDING HOUSE follow.
Taking its usual spot on the back cover is LIL’ ABNER by Al Capp.
_______________________________________________________________________________
“The Lost Art of Kreigh Collins, the Complete Mitzi McCoy” features the entire run of Kreigh Collins’ first NEA feature.
MITZI McCOY ran from 1948 to 1950 and showcased Kreigh Collins’ skill as an illustrator and storyteller. His picturesque landscapes, lovely character designs, and thrilling action sequences brimmed with detail and charm, and the strip’s ensemble cast rotated in and out of the spotlight taking turns as protagonists in the dozen story arcs collected in this volume. The last story collected in “The Complete Mitzi McCoy” is the narrative bridge that set Collins and his characters off on a new journey, beautifully told for the next couple of decades in the much-lauded adventure strip Kevin the Bold.
The collection includes an introduction by Eisner Award-winning author Frank M. Young, an Afterward by Ithaca College’s Ed Catto, and previously unpublished artwork and photos. Longtime comics artist Butch Guice also provides a new pin-up of the character Mitzi McCoy.
The book is available for $30. For domestic shipping, add $4; for international orders, please add $25 to cover first class shipping. To place an order, leave a comment below or email me at BrianEdwardCollins1[at]gmail.com, and I will give you PayPal or Venmo information. Thank you!
_______________________________________________________________________________
For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.
Kreigh’s Comics 