Tan Shun!

Saturday Leftover Day.

This is a big one. A couple of years ago I came across a newspaper section ade especially for the army, called the American Armed Forces Features. It was produced by the Bradbury company from 1955 until the mid sixties. For this 16 page newspaper comic section, only new strips were created by a host of talent from the late fifties, including many cartoonists and some big names. My fellow historian Paul Tumey alerted me to the fact that there was an online archive for this paper, which was distributed to army newspapers all over the country, alays carrying their name in the masthead. I went to that site, marveled about and and forgot it again. Recently I came back there through another search, quickly pulled all of the pages and started filing them. One of the features that attrackted me the most (apart from all the big names I will be showing later) started out on the front page (although later on it shrank and was moved to the back. Private Gooch was drawn and signed by Jess Benton, who until now was only known for drawing the Li'l Abner in the time of the Pilgrims strip Jasper Jooks, which only appeared in papers for a very short time in the late forties. To find such a sustained creation by a forgotten artist was in itself a great find. But the style in Which he drew Private Gooch (different from Jasper Jooks, though one could see the resemblance), did ring a bell with me. It seemed like this was the artist of the Luke the Spook and Hector the Spector fillers in Sterling's crime comic The Informer and the artist identified by master art spotter Jim Vadeboncoeur as Clem Weisbecker in Fawcett's Soldier Comics. I wrote about that in a seperate post, which you'll find if you follow the link.

But for now, here are all the Gooch episodes I could find online. As you can see, some years are completely missing, and in ten years of looking I have found only one color sample of this paper. If anyone out there has any more, please contact me. The years missing are 1956 (Vol. 2) and some single issues of Vol 4, 5 and 6. And anything beyond Vol 6, by the way, although I have to say the contents became less interesting towards the end.

Clemmier and Clemmier

Curious Clem

Saturday Leftover Day.

Thanks to the scanners at the Digital Comics Museum, I came across some fun war stories that I find really remarkable. I like this kind of loose style, whic seems a once inappripriate for the subject and in line with it. Mastr art spotter Jim Vandeboncoeur Jr. attributes this art to a Clem Weisbecker, a journeyman artist who is mostly know for his work for MLJ, the Archie company in the mid forties.

But it struck me that this must also be the unnamed artist of the funny Hector the Spector and Luke the Spooks tories in Sterling's The Informer books. I have shown these stories before, because I thought I had found the artist, when a piece of work in a similar style turned up in The Armed Forced Features, signed Jess Benton. Benton was another joruneyman artist, who must have worked as someone's ghost or something, since the only signed solo work he did was when he did a spot on Li'l Abner imitation called Jasper Jooks - in a completely different style. In my previous post I conclude that Benton must have been the unnamed artist of Luke the Spook (noting the preference for alliterating names). Now I don't know. Jim usually knows his stuff. Still, all the Clem Weisbecker material I can turn up is in a compeltely different style, not as humorous and most of it ten years earlier. At least Benton was still working in the mid fifties.

So here we have the evidence. Are these one and the same artist? And is it Benton or is it Weisbecker?

For more samples of Jasper Jooks, go to Alan Holtz' Strippers Guide or wait until I have scanned in my run of dailies.