The Ray and The Black Condor

One more book lugged out of the old closet. Special Edition Series 2, The Ray and The Black Condor, by Lou Fine, Reed Crandall, and others, 1974. Special Edition Reprints, Inc., East Moline, Illinois. Introduction by James Steranko.

I still consider this the best reprint volume ever published although the quality of the reproduction is only one step above a photocopy. In 1974 I had only seen some of Fine’s cover artwork in Steranko’s History of Comics. DC comics also ran a few color stories as backups in one of their Giants. It’s a large book and reprints 316 pages of Quality art from the forties Crack Comics and Smash Comics in sequence.

The Lou Fine portrait below is from a trade card set “Famous Comic Book Creators” ©1992 Eclipse Enterprises. Fine’s cover work was also heavily featured in Comic Images handsome card set The Golden Age of Comics All-Chromium.

More Thropp Family

One more fine episode of The Thropp Family by Don Komisarow, Lou Fine and Lawrence Lariar from Liberty 18 January 1947. This issue also feature an article on Canadian animator Norman McClaren I posted HERE.

Peter Scratch

Lou Fine (1914-1971) once had plans to be an electrical engineer but after leaving college began writing and illustrating his own stories for comic magazines. In 1958 he was illustrating the Ellery Queen series for the American Weekly magazine and then began the superb Adam Ames soap opera comic strip from 1959 to 1962. He began Peter Scratch on 13 September 1965 with writer Elliot Caplin (Abbie ‘n Slats) and it ran until 1967 eventually being ghosted by Jack Sparling and Neal Adams.

Peter Scratch, a “slightly used private eye,” lived with his hardboiled, chain-smoking mother, who he addressed as Lucretia. The artwork was solidly in the Rip Kirby style camp but the scripts were a bit too zany for the subject matter. Fine’s hobbies were boating, gardening and drawing. He kept a 14 foot boat christened the “Adam Ames.” He died July 4, 1971.

Don Komisarow, Lawrence Lariar, and Lou Fine

In 1945 and 1946 Liberty Magazine was running a 2 page comic by “Donlou,” a pen-name used by illustrators Don Komisarow and Lou Fine. The text was by Lawrence Lariar, cartoonist, author and cartoon editor of the Parade newspaper supplement. Lou Fine is well-known for his superhero comics for Victor Fox, Eisner& Iger and Quality comics in the Golden Age. He quit comics in the forties for advertising and comic strip work.

Don Komisarow is less well-known but he was a well-known newspaper illustrator circa 1936-1939 and had a single-panel called “All For Lovely Woman’s Sake” and in 1954 was drawing a religious comic strip re-telling the tales of Noah and Jacob which was distributed by King Features.

Lawrence Lariar won the Red Badge Mystery Prize in 1944 for a book entitled “The Man with the Lumpy Nose” published by Dodd, Mead & Co. A reviewer said of that book:

“The man with the grotesque proboscis is a bird of ill omen, where he appears evil follows, usually murder. When his shadow falls on the great Earl Chance, a magazine editor almost any member of the Comic arts club could have cheerfully murdered, and wins him the attention of Homer Bull, short, fat bundle of shrewdness, murder comes home to roost. Lariar has fashioned quite a neat plot, but best feature of the yarn is its picture of the Bohemian world of the comic strip artist.”

Adam Ames

Lou Fine's strip Adam Ames is unfamiliar to most people but it was an exceptional example of the soap opera comic strip genre, right up there with Juliet Jones and Abbie and Slats. These samples are from May 16, 1960 to June 25, 1960.