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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 5, 2022 18:10:08 GMT -5
Even when I was a kit and into comics, I never liked the Phantom or Prince Valiant strips in the paper. As as comics kid, I felt obligated to try to read and enjoy them on principle, but I always found them aggressively dull and boring. I was annoyed at being let down a by comic. I don't know they never clicked for me. I think I fell in love with Phantom because his whole shtick was scaring the bejesus out of people with legends and ghost stories about an African protector who couldn't die. It's both cool and campy |
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Post by tartanphantom on Jul 5, 2022 19:48:51 GMT -5
Even when I was a kit and into comics, I never liked the Phantom or Prince Valiant strips in the paper. As as comics kid, I felt obligated to try to read and enjoy them on principle, but I always found them aggressively dull and boring. I was annoyed at being let down a by comic. I don't know they never clicked for me. I think I fell in love with Phantom because his whole shtick was scaring the bejesus out of people with legends and ghost stories about an African protector who couldn't die. It's both cool and campy
As a kid, I was an avid fan of both the Daily and Sunday Phantom strips. I liked Prince Valiant, but followed it will less devotion.
The one that I never could fathom (aside from Mary Worth, Judge Parker and Apartment 3-G) was Dondi. I tried, but just didn't get it. They still ran Steve Canyon when I was a kid, and it was OK, but it seemed to move at a slower pace than The Phantom. What I need is a good Steve Canyon strip collection.
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Post by DE Sinclair on Jul 5, 2022 23:01:40 GMT -5
Even when I was a kit and into comics, I never liked the Phantom or Prince Valiant strips in the paper. As as comics kid, I felt obligated to try to read and enjoy them on principle, but I always found them aggressively dull and boring. I was annoyed at being let down a by comic. I don't know they never clicked for me. I think I fell in love with Phantom because his whole shtick was scaring the bejesus out of people with legends and ghost stories about an African protector who couldn't die. It's both cool and campy "The Ghost Who Walks" Plus he had the rings that left skull marks when he punched them. Extremely cool and a little creepy. But Prince Valiant was boring as all get out. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 6, 2022 0:11:27 GMT -5
Bah! A pox on all attackers of Valiant, Prince of Thule!
Foster is great; John Cullen Murphy?
Eh, once in a while.
I loves me some Phantom, though the only time I got to see it was when I visited my grandparents. It was better to read a week's sequence, as things moved faster; but, there was plenty of intrigue in the good stories. It was pretty darn good, up through the 60s; but, once they started shrinking the comics page, all adventure strips were doomed. It is hard to get much of a narrative when you are reduced to the size of a matchbox.
I caught a little of more recent era of Prince Valiant, with Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz; and, then a couple of Tom Yeates. Those guys seemed better at adapting to the limitations of modern papers than some of the people handling syndicated stuff.
Dondi was never in our paper; but I saw a bit, in high school, in the Chicago Tribune, which our library would get. Didin't do much. I had read about it and from most accounts, its greatest popularity was early on. The kid was a war orphan and the soap opera dealt with the attempts to bring him to the US and a new family. Given the time frame of its debut, that was something that hit home, to a lot of people. It was even adapted into a movie, though I have never seen it, nor have I read anything that praised it as anything other than average.
We had Apartment 3-G, in our local paper, when I was a kid and I read it, It was decent stuff; particularly liked the professor character. The creator and long time artist, Alex Kotsky, did work for Quality Comics, in the 40s, including their version of Manhunter. I'll take it over Mary Worth or Judge Parker, though I have only seen a few examples of those.
We also had Steve Canyon; but, its heyday was long over and it gave over more to domestic stuff, rather than the adventure stories from the late 40s and 50s. There was the occasional spy intrigue; but, not that much. The first decade is the stuff to read, then into the early 60s.
We also had Steve Roper & Mike Nomad, which I always enjoyed, in the 70s, as a kid. Good detective stuff and plenty of action.
Really, the 1980s killed off most of the adventure strips, or badly wounded them. For some, it started in the 70s, as the economy and labor issues started leading to many papers to shrink the comics. It accelerated in the 80s and Garfield and Bloom County had everyone looking for gag strips that could be merchandised. By the 90s, a lot of strips that had been around since the 30s started dying off. I'm amazed that Blondie is still going, with most of the same gags that I read 50 years ago. They do know how to milk nostalgia, though, when they hit an anniversary milestone. Dick Tracy has done a bit of that in the last decade, with Joe Staton drawing it. It also got a boost from Max Allen Collins, during his tenure, as writer.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 6, 2022 0:24:07 GMT -5
When I was a kid, we had Alley Oop (daily & Sundays), Steve Roper & Mike Nomad, Steve Canyon, Peanuts, Beetle Bailey, Blondie, The Family Circle, Apartment 3-G; and probably something else I am forgetting. The Sunday paper also had Captain Easy, Tiger, Eek & Meek, BC and Short Ribs. We eventually got Love is (the most boring pile of shmaltz, ever), Marvin, Frank & Ernest, Spider-Man, Garfield, Hi and Lois, Hagar, and Doonesbury. By the time I was finishing up college, they had Calvin & Hobbes, though we were reading it in the Chicago Tribune, not long after it started, at the Univ of Illinois. The campus paper, The Daily Illini, was dominated by Bloom County, though we had to suffer through Berke Breathed's accident and reruns.
My grandparents, in Southern Illinois, had stuff like Barney Google & Snuffy Smith, Tumbleweeds, Redeye, Alley Oop and one or two of the soap and adventure strips. My maternal grandparents, in Bloomington, had The Phantom and Prince Valiant, which was all I really recall looking for, in their paper.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 6, 2022 5:38:33 GMT -5
Bah! A pox on all attackers of Valiant, Prince of Thule! Foster is great (...) Hear, hear!!! I never really enjoyed Murphy's work on the strip, but Foster was the king of the Sunday page. A true master of his craft! |
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Post by tartanphantom on Jul 6, 2022 7:11:08 GMT -5
Oh wow... for some reason, Tumbleweeds had been blocked from my memory for the last 10 years until codystarbuck mentioned it! I always found the strip enjoyable... in a B.C./Wizard of Id sort of way, but as a kid, I always thought that most of the characters tended to resemble Droopy. It wasn't until after the strip was cancelled that I learned that Jim Davis (Garfield) had worked as an assistant for Tom K. Ryan.
Yet another blast from the past strip where I'm now going to have to dig up some reprint volumes! Thanks a lot...
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 6, 2022 8:44:52 GMT -5
I think I fell in love with Phantom because his whole shtick was scaring the bejesus out of people with legends and ghost stories about an African protector who couldn't die. It's both cool and campy
As a kid, I was an avid fan of both the Daily and Sunday Phantom strips. I liked Prince Valiant, but followed it will less devotion.
The one that I never could fathom (aside from Mary Worth, Judge Parker and Apartment 3-G) was Dondi. I tried, but just didn't get it. They still ran Steve Canyon when I was a kid, and it was OK, but it seemed to move at a slower pace than The Phantom. What I need is a good Steve Canyon strip collection.
I’m reading a collection of Dondi that covers most of 1957 sand 58. It was treacly at its best. |
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Post by impulse on Jul 6, 2022 10:19:00 GMT -5
I don't knock Phantom/Valiant or those who like it. I just could not get into it no matter how hard I tried, and I was mad a comic betrayed me by not being exciting (to me).
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 6, 2022 10:55:53 GMT -5
I don't knock Phantom/Valiant or those who like it. I just could not get into it no matter how hard I tried, and I was mad a comic betrayed me by not being exciting (to me). I was lucky enough to start Prince Valiant at the beginning (not in 1937! I mean I started with the first reprint volume!  ), when things were way more hectic than they would become later on and when Hal Foster would turn from a good cartoonist to a comic page god. I guess that must have played a role! Did you read the Hal Foster material or the John Cullen Murphy one? If it was in newspapers, it would probably be the latter... which I admit never interested me overmuch. The art was so-so, and the scripts rather tame. |
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Post by impulse on Jul 6, 2022 11:14:56 GMT -5
I don't knock Phantom/Valiant or those who like it. I just could not get into it no matter how hard I tried, and I was mad a comic betrayed me by not being exciting (to me). I was lucky enough to start Prince Valiant at the beginning (not in 1937! I mean I started with the first reprint volume! ), when things were way more hectic than they would become later on and when Hal Foster would turn from a good cartoonist to a comic page god. I guess that must have played a role! Did you read the Hal Foster material or the John Cullen Murphy one? If it was in newspapers, it would probably be the latter... which I admit never interested me overmuch. The art was so-so, and the scripts rather tame. I was a kid, and it was the newspaper in likely the early 90s, so whatever that would be. This was way before I was into comic books enough to be aware of specific creators. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 6, 2022 11:21:31 GMT -5
And Murphy turned most of the stories over to Val's son, Arn, which was a bit like having Alexander take over for Dagwood. A fun one to read is Mort Walker's short-lived Sam's Strip, which was a kind of meta-comic, where everyone knew they were in a comic strip and it used to play with conventions and break the fourth wall.   |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 6, 2022 14:02:39 GMT -5
I was lucky enough to start Prince Valiant at the beginning (not in 1937! I mean I started with the first reprint volume!  ), when things were way more hectic than they would become later on and when Hal Foster would turn from a good cartoonist to a comic page god. I guess that must have played a role! Did you read the Hal Foster material or the John Cullen Murphy one? If it was in newspapers, it would probably be the latter... which I admit never interested me overmuch. The art was so-so, and the scripts rather tame. I was a kid, and it was the newspaper in likely the early 90s, so whatever that would be. This was way before I was into comic books enough to be aware of specific creators. That would have been John Cullen Murphy, with stories from his son, Cullen Murphy. Gary Gianni took over drawing, in 2004 and Mark Schultz did the scripting, them Tom Yeates came on in 2012. John Cullen Murphy handled the strip from 1970 on. The early years are the best, with young Val and his adventures, as he becomes a Knight of the Round table and then culminates in being a key component in defending Arthur's kingdom from a Viking invasion. After that, he does a bit of globetrotting and the Hun fighters and the Aleta saga are all pretty good runs. I bought the reprint volumes up to when Val comes to North America, with a Viking group, along with Aleta, and Arn is born in the New World. That's about the first decade of the series. There is a run in there where Prince Valiant has a companion strip, The Medieval Castle, which ran at the bottom of the page, underneath the main strip. It featured the lives of a medieval noble family, within the castle and their adventures. The characters were never really developed; so, it didn't have staying power; but, it was a nice visual exploration of medieval life, though more romanticized. Gray Morrow and Wally Wood also did some work on the strip, in the 70s. Must have been a dream come true, for Wally, who was a huge Foster fan and swiped regularly from him, if only in technique (he copied Foster's way of doing chain mail completely, which influenced every one who drew such things). |
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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 8, 2022 19:25:50 GMT -5
Something I used to do when I was younger was take the newspapers from the pile that my grandfather would throw away for later (god forbid he didn't save a certain recipe for my grandmother) and clip out that day's strip for whatever comic I was into at the time, paste it in a notebook, and make some sort of frankenstein's monster of a comic book I've also discovered that Zippy The Pinhead is still on-going and available online
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2022 20:15:31 GMT -5
Congrats to shaxper on his special day with Amber! Best of luck to you and yours. -M |
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), when things were way more hectic than they would become later on and when Hal Foster would turn from a good cartoonist to a comic page god. I guess that must have played a role!
), when things were way more hectic than they would become later on and when Hal Foster would turn from a good cartoonist to a comic page god. I guess that must have played a role!