BOB SCHOENKE drew Jack Armstrong, Laredo Crockett, and Jane Arden. He also drew Schnapsy exclusively for the SENTINEL newspaper out of Montgomery County, MD. Bob Schoenke's Schnapsy began August 1, 1963 and came to a finish on Oct 24, 1963.
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Both Bob Schoenke’s Jack Armstrong and its successor Laredo Crockett were extremely violent comic strips. The two strips ran a total of 21 years from 26 May 1947 to January 27 1968. Laredo Crockett was a bit more adult than Jack Armstrong with the added spice of sex to the plots. It’s a wonder the strips survived so long since they flourished during the period when the crusade against comic books was at its height. The comic strips enlisted the aid of Milt Caniff and Al Capp to defend and distance the strips from the comic books. As Caniff pointed out the comics already had their censors in syndicates, editors, advertisers and readers, anyone of which could reject anything they found offensive. Somehow, perhaps because it was a western, Laredo Crockett avoided censorship, even when he introduced what looked like a cat-house into the background. These selections are from various times in 1950, 1951, and 1952.
Jack Armstrong, the globetrotting “All American Boy”, as played by Don Ameche, was a hero of radio serials for 14 years. Bob Schoenke wrote and drew the comic strip from 26 May 1947 (in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette at least). Jack Armstrong was joined by his sidekick Billy Fairfield and Vic Hardy, from the radio program. There were 13 issues of the Jack Armstrong comic book drawn by Bob Schoenke. The strip Jack Armstrong ended with a neat sidestep into a new title, “Laredo Crockett”, on 12 June 1950.
A sequence of Jack Armstrong strips in a storyline about uranium thieves and the ghost of Billy the Kid appear below. Dates are, June 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26 and 27 of 1947.
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