Dan Smith of the Journal – in the “Sunday Magazine Section”

“With Original Water Color Drawings by Dan Smith,” August 11, 1928

Dan Smith was a King Features artist in 1928 but so far I can find out very little about him. I have three crude photocopies from the Vancouver Sun featuring his romantic fantasy style, signed, and one comic strip, The Story of Superstitions, which may or may not have been illustrated by Smith. I found a photograph of an artist named Dan Smith in an old article in The Blue Pencil Magazine, an organ of The Blue Pencil Club, for June to October 1900. The photograph was from an article titled “Held by the Enemy.”

‘The Story of Superstitions,’ after ‘The Golden Bough,’ by Sir James Frazer, Vancouver Sun, June 20, 1927

“One of the most pathetic incidents of the late unpleasantness with Spain – that is pathetic from the standpoint of the newspapers that paid their salaries while they waited – was the penning up of a score of brilliant American journalists and famous Park Row artists on the island of St. Thomas by the Spanish fleet… The speaking photograph above, now made public for the first time, shows how the New York section of that “round up” of newspaper men looked while they were held by the enemy… The picture was taken by the Journal’s boy photographer, Percy Byron, on May 16, 1898, in the front yard of Billy Sill’s headquarters, near the King’s wharf.” 

   

Billy Sill was the representative of the Journal and Dan Smith was their artist. Cresson Schell, also pictured, was with Leslie’s Weekly. Sill went on to become dramatic editor of the Evening World.

   

‘Diana’ by Dan Smith, July 15, 1928

The Blue Pencil Magazine can be browsed HERE.

‘Andromeda’ by Dan Smith, July 21, 1928