Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,922
|
Post by Crimebuster on Sept 27, 2019 9:55:34 GMT -5
I thought about putting this in the "ask the CCF" but decided it should probably have it's own thread so I don't clog that one up.
I knew my grandmother pretty well, but I never knew her to be an artistic person. When she passed away several years ago, though, as family historian I came into possession of her various photo and keepsake albums. Much to my surprise and complete delight, there were a few pages of drawings she had done as a youth.
And not just any drawings.
Drawings of comic strip and comic book characters!
My guess is that all of her drawings are from comic strips, even though some of the characters also appeared (or first appeared in one case) in comic books.
It seems as though she was copying specific drawings from the comics, teaching herself to draw. These drawings obviously meant a lot to her for her to keep them her whole life. So I wonder why she stopped drawing as an adult.
But more to the point, I wonder what, exactly, her sources were.
I'm in the process of scanning the few pages she did, and I'm going to post the images here. I'm hoping you can help me identify what comic strips these are from. In most cases I think this will be impossible, as they are just head shots, but in a couple cases they are full poses that I think correspond to specific strips. I'd love to pin down exactly when she did these drawings! I'm sure it was between 1940 and 1944, and I suspect they were mostly or entirely done around 1940-41, but we'll see what the group thinks!
I'll have the first one up shortly. It's the best of them, and the one that i think will be easiest to identify, and if we can pin it down, then it might give us the clues we need to see what other strips appeared at the same time to identify the others!
|
|
Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,922
|
Post by Crimebuster on Sept 27, 2019 10:08:32 GMT -5
As soon as I saw this drawing by my grandmother, I knew it had to be copying Alex Raymond. The style is unmistakable. I did a little digging, and it is indeed a Raymond drawing from Flash Gordon, of Dale Arden. I managed to find an image online of a Raymond strip where she's wearing a similar outfit, but not quite the same. This one has the diaphanous skirt and the ribbing at the waist, but the top is different. I feel pretty certain she copied this from a Sunday strip, due to the size and colors, but I'd love to figure out exactly which strip and when it ran! Here's another Dale image with a similar outfit, but not quite the same - here the cape, top, and skirt are right, but the bikini bottom for want of a better term is wrong:
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Sept 27, 2019 10:10:54 GMT -5
Looks like your grannie chained Dale to the floor.
|
|
Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,922
|
Post by Crimebuster on Sept 27, 2019 10:14:38 GMT -5
Looks like your grannie chained Dale to the floor. She was a nice lady, she would never chain up poor Dale! This perfidy has the stench of Ming the Merciless all over it!
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Sept 27, 2019 10:17:39 GMT -5
Wow. She had talent.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2019 11:00:35 GMT -5
Gorgeous Artwork and Very Talented Indeed. ... Thanks for sharing it.
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Sept 27, 2019 11:13:27 GMT -5
Cool! Definitely agree it would be from the Alex Raymond era, he left in the early '40s and was followed by Austin Briggs I think? Here's another Raymond in that same line... from The Tyrant of Mongo book collecting 1937-1941 strips... I had a grandmother who drew as well, she taught me how she did what she knew, which was women's faces in profile... wish I had one now. She died suddenly when I was 12.
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Sept 27, 2019 11:32:53 GMT -5
No date on this, just a random panel from a blog, but looks like the same story anyway...
|
|
Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,922
|
Post by Crimebuster on Sept 27, 2019 12:19:03 GMT -5
Good find! The date narrows it down a little in terms of which storyline it came from, but I haven't been able to get any futher yet. Just from title alone, "The Fall of Ming" was running during May, 1941, so that would be my starting point if I had a copy of the collected strips.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Sept 27, 2019 12:41:44 GMT -5
Good find! The date narrows it down a little in terms of which storyline it came from, but I haven't been able to get any futher yet. Just from title alone, "The Fall of Ming" was running during May, 1941, so that would be my starting point if I had a copy of the collected strips. That is the storyline. Ming has captured Dale and Flash infiltrates Mingo City, with the help of the Power Men, which has Flash in a suit that looks like the inspiration for the Barry Allen Flash costume.... The Power Men sequence is earlier, the date on the strip is 1940, but leads into The Fall of Ming, where Ming is finally defeated and forced to abdicate in favor of Barin and Ardala. Then, Raymond's last storyline has Flash, Dale and Zarkov return to Earth and fight a fascist power, not named but obviously the Nazis, defeating their war machine. He then left the strip (and went into the Marines, I believe) and Austin Briggs took over, with the gang returning to Mongo. Your other example, from the pop up book, is from the first year of strips, where Flash meets Barin and Vultan, then fights in a tournament, gins a kingdom, then fights a battle against Ming's forces. Very transitionary period, as Raymond goes from a more minimalist style, to his lusher, more fully rendered look.
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Sept 27, 2019 12:57:21 GMT -5
Wow, that Flash suit which Flash is wearing is, um, pretty authentic.
|
|
Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,922
|
Post by Crimebuster on Sept 27, 2019 13:01:22 GMT -5
Thanks for the info!
A quick check of dates shows that the 5.5 image of her chained to floor in this costume that beccabear posted must be from 1940, as May 5, 1940 did indeed fall on a Sunday, whereas in 1941 it was a Monday. I'm wondering if the image my grandmother copied, then is from this 1940 sequence. Which would put it a little earlier than I thought - when she was still in 8th grade. Hmm!
|
|
|
Post by chadwilliam on Sept 27, 2019 22:03:39 GMT -5
As soon as I saw this drawing by my grandmother, I knew it had to be copying Alex Raymond. Are we sure that it wasn't Alex Raymond who was swiping from your grandmother?
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2019 10:48:50 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Sept 28, 2019 17:43:43 GMT -5
So, yeah, you are definitely looking at the Power Men storyline, in 1940. I was going to check my scans; but, my dvd drive has apparently bit the dust. I would suspect the June or July time frame, in the Sundays, based on the example I had found and some others from that sequence.
Wish I still had my books......
|
|