Hi and Lois and Dick and Mary

Friday Family Feast. 

In my folders I had two months of early Hi and Lois dailies. And noew they are here. I like this early period, when Hi and Lois both had their own world and gags. A bit like The Dick van Dyke Show.

Lack of Dawn

Friday Brand New Day. Years ago I acquired a large run of Sundays from the late forties early fifties adventure strip Dawn O'Day by Val Heinz. A remarkable strip about a young model trying to make it in Hollywood, because it started out as a Sunday only and was drawn in a faux Milton Caniff style by an artist who was not known for that before or after. I may have seen a three tier half page Sunday somewhere, but I get the impression it was only ever used as a two tier third. In fact, the originals I am showing here only have the two tiers as well. After a year or so the strip was succesful enough to try out a daily run. But that turned out to be unsustainable, either because of of low sales or because iot just was too much work. Val Heinz had been working as an assistant on Gasoline Alley for Frank King alongside Bill Perry, who later took over Gasoline Ally altogether. I think he went into advertising and signpainting after Dawn O'Day was discontinued in 1954. Before that, the daily version had stopped and although the earlier Sunday formed a continuity, the later ones were in fact seperate gags. I have shown many samples of my run and have scanned all of them. I am not proud to say a huge number of them are still waiting to be cleaned. But here are a couple of later originals, I picked up elsewhere. With that, i have two announcements from Editor and publisher. One for the start of the Sunday feature and one for the start of the daily. I also have an 1948 article about Heinz, Perry and King.

 

Up To The Toms

Thursday Cowboy Day. 

 Tom Gill was a prolific artist who is mainly known for his work on The Lone Ranger, bioth in newspaper comics and monthly comics. He also had a shorlived modern adventure strip before The Lone Ranger. A year ago, I caollected some of them.