silver age comics

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!).

 

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!

Merry Christmas and a Good 1969

KTC xmas 68 200

1968 was filled with change. After appearing for 19 years, “Kevin the Bold” ended its run. At the age of 61, Kreigh Collins launched his third comic strip, “Up Anchor.” This fresh start was the big news in the holiday letter Kreigh and Teddy sent out that December. There were also family updates , typical New Year’s optimism, and a dose of Kreigh’s wit.

“Up Anchor” ran until early 1972, and after its 174 episodes, Collins retired. All told, Kreigh’s comics appeared for 25 years, spanning four decades — over 1,200 Sundays.

UA envelope 72

Toppers

In comic strip parlance, a topper is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. These strips usually were positioned at the top of the page, but they sometimes ran beneath the main strip, as in “Water Lore,” Kreigh Collins’s topper for his third and final comic, “Up Anchor.”

UA 081069 OA 72

Times were changing in the 1960s — in the comic strip business, they were changing too, as space for comics continued to shrink. Fewer and fewer papers printed half-page comics, and Collins was frustrated by the way his artwork was cropped in order to squeeze into the smaller third-page format. When his new comic launched, he drew it as a one-third pager, and used the topper to fill out the half-page of space. If a paper ran it as a third, the topper was lost. Printed half-page versions of “Up Anchor” are very rare, so these days, the most likely place to see the “Water Lore” topper is on examples of the original artwork. 

UA WL 022270 OA 100February 2, 1970
UA WL 091370 BWS 100 qccSeptember 13, 1970
UA WL 092070 BWS 100 qccSeptember 20, 1970
UA WL 100371 BWS 100October 3, 1971
UA WL 102471 BWS 100October 24, 1971
UA WL 103171 BWS 100 qccOctober 31, 1971
UA WL 110771 BWS 100 qccNovember 7, 1971
UA WL 111471 OA 100November 14, 1971
UA WL 112170 BWS 100 qccNovember 21, 1971
UA WL 121971 OA 100December 19, 1971

Metamorphosis 2 — More Time Travel

In the final episode of “Kevin the Bold,” after saving yet another damsel in distress (and of course, an entire village), our hero is begged by a lovely señorita to settle down and stay in her now-peaceful valley. Kevin, whose last name (Marlin) has been revealed in a recent, prior episode, declines the offer from the Spanish beauty but admits he could imagine himself settling down on a boat in say, 300 years.

KTB 102768 Th 100 qcc

Abruptly, “Up Anchor” was launched a week later (November 3, 1968). As the NEA’s promotional literature put it, “Kreigh Collins’ credentials to create and draw ‘Up Anchor,’ America’s first color comic strip devoted to boating, are as bona fide as the burr on a thistle.” Narrated by first mate Jane Marlin, “Up Anchor” was based on experiences Collins had with his family cruising on his own sailboat. Aboard Heather with Jane were her husband (Kevin Marlin, remember him?), and sons Erik and Dave. The scripts were developed in partnership with Collins’ wife Theresa (“Teddy”), who had previously chronicled the family’s round-trip journey from their home port on Lake Michigan to Maine (Teddy’s “The Wake of the Heather” was published in 1967) .

UA 110368 Th 100 qcc