As *spoon* as Arch comes back from vacation Hepcat will still be Hepcat. 8 8

[Hepcat]

Bloody hell! What a struggle! What should have been a five second copy-and-paste turned into a monumental battle.

First of all I guess my linked pictures were http as opposed to the https the program here wants. I saw the warning and changed links to https. Still didn't work. Evidently the damn program wanted me to feed each block of text and each https image in piecemeal. Otherwise the program got confused as to what it should be formatting. For &*@^#~* sake! Screaming at the thing didn't help.

Edited December 19, 2020 by Hepcat

[mica]

Hang in there.

[Hepcat]

Another strip that was carried in the London Free Press in 1958-59 that I read avidly until 1968 when it was dropped was D ick Tracy. I seem to remember that it was actually on the front page of the Free Press comic section for a number of years.

Harvey published D ick Tracy #25-145  between early 1950 and early 1961. I'm still a big D ickTracy fan but sadly I have only a few D ick Tracy comics in my collection:

Of course I hope to add several dozen more over time!

 

Edited December 19, 2020 by Hepcat

[Hepcat]

Trying to post about D ick Tracy on this board is also a struggle since the program objects to D ick. Incidentally, a roller derby babe in the Toronto area a few years ago was calling herself Dickless Tracy.

[frozentundraguy]

Great lineup of Mr Tracy books. I have but one, it's in complete tatters, but its the issue where the wrist watch radio is introduced.

[Duffman_Comics]

7 hours ago, Hepcat said:

Trying to post about D ick Tracy on this board is also a struggle since the program objects to D ick. Incidentally, a roller derby babe in the Toronto area a few years ago was calling herself Dickless Tracy.

Here it's slang for a policewoman . . .

[Hepcat]

I believe that the Lone Ranger strip was also being carried in the Saturday London Free Press when I first started delving into the comic section in 1958(?). As a result the Lone Ranger remains among my very favourite cowboy characters. 

Dell's Lone Ranger title featured magnificent painted covers from February 1951 to September 1957 in issues #32-111. I have nineteen of these in my collection. Here are scans of my ten earliest Lone Ranger comics:

41

42

43

44

48

52

58

61

72

76

Edited December 19, 2020 by Hepcat

[Hepcat]

On 11/19/2019 at 1:03 PM, Krismusic said:

 

really cool stuff I wanted that mad scientist chemistry kit when I was younger but it wasn't that exact one maybe a more modern version of it.

 

 

The Mad Mad Mad Scientist Laboratory featured fabulous box art by the legendary Mort Kunstler.

When were you born? Was the set you wanted one of the Doctor Dreadful Labs that Tyco released between 1994 and 1996?

Edited December 19, 2020 by Hepcat

[Hepcat]

Another comic strip from the Saturday London Free Press that I recall from my earliest comic reading years was the Katzenjammer Kids/Captain and the Kids comic strip.

I still love the characters to this very day! Here are scans of my three Katzenjammer Kids comics:

[Hepcat]

What the bloody hell? I've never seen this type of programming on a discussion forum. I try to "Reply to Topic" and the program automatically quotes my previous thread. Why? If I want to QUOTE myself, I will. I don't want the program to do it for me.

 

[Hepcat]

The Mickey Mouse strip was always located at or near the very front of the Saturday London Free Press comic section just above the Uncle Remus strip.

To this point I've not gotten heavily into collecting Mickey Mouse comics and I have only one in my collection right now:

Quite simply with 18 Dell Four Color issues with Mickey Mouse as the title character going back to 1941 plus 84 Dell Mickey Mouse issues ending in 1962 I've always found embarking on the task of complete the run too daunting. I've got nearly half of the 14 Dell Goofy issues though!

File copy

File copy
 

There are also 10 Dell Four Color Pluto issues I'd eventually like to acquire for my collection.

 

[MetalPSI]

Why do they call it four color?

[comicdonna]

17 minutes ago, IkewithMike said:

Why do they call it four color?

The title is a reference to the four basic colors used when printing early twentieth-century comic books: cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

[frozentundraguy]

Getting back to Spoon Tracy, rather than scan my lone comic book, I have this book (published in 1987) to share. There's quite a bit of material on Gould, followed by quite a number of the best comic strips. Unfortunately there is no reference to Tracy comic books.  I might have to check out and see if I can find the old Republic serials that were filmed between 1937 and 1941 via Roku.

 

[Hepcat]

On 12/21/2020 at 9:33 PM, frozentundraguy said:

Getting back to Spoon Tracy, rather than scan my lone comic book, I have this book (published in 1987) to share. There's quite a bit of material on Gould, followed by quite a number of the best comic strips. Unfortunately there is no reference to Tracy comic books. 

Cool book! Are the D ick Tracy toys and ephemera spawned by the strip covered in the pages?

I have these D ick Tracy items in my own collection:

I'd also really like to get the Aladdin Industries Tracy lunchbox some day:

 

Plus a Hasbro Tracy Marble Maze:

[Hepcat]

Another comic strip that was in the Saturday London Free Press from my first memories of its comic section was Pogo by Walt Kelly:

I loved the Pogo strip as a kid although many of the references went way over my head. For a time in the early 1960's there was a pig based on Nikita Khrushchev and a goat based on Fidel Castro guesting with the other critters from the swamp.

Dell published a couple Four Color Pogo comics in 1946-47 and then sixteen issues of Pogo Possum from late 1949 to early 1954. Pogo was such a popular character at the time that Dell wanted to up the price of the Pogo comic mag to $0.15. Walt Kelly was to his everlasting credit so adamantly opposed to the idea of such price gouging that Dell desisted.

Here's a scan of my copy of Pogo 14:

I'd eventually like to acquire all sixteen issues of Pogo Possum of course.

[kav]

Arch: you vacation is over!  

[Hepcat]

We've brought a new addition into the household this winter solstice:

We've named him Snowy. As you can see, Scout, has already made her acquaintance with Snowy.

[Hepcat]

Blondie by Chic Young was another comic strip that from my earliest memories was there in the Saturday London Free Press' comic section:

Harvey published a whopping 148 issues of Blondie between 1950 and 1965, another whopping 140 issues of Dagwood between the same years, plus four Blondie & Dagwood Family Giants between 1963 and 1965:

 

Sadly I have exactly none of those issues in my collection currently even though they're not that pricey compared to superhero and many other kinds of comics. Someday, somehow I'd like to rectify that deficiency in my collection by getting a bunch in an auction lot.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Hepcat

[Hepcat]

Another newspaper strip that influenced my taste in comics for life was the Li'l Abner strip which was not within my memory even carried in the London Free Press. Nonetheless I was aware of Li'l Abner somehow perhaps through either the Detroit Free Press or the Detroit News since we visited my uncle's family in Detroit once or twice per year when I was a kid. In any event I was certainly aware of his existence by the time the 1959 Li'l Abner movie came to London:

I knew I was missing out on something really good not getting the strip in the London Free Press.  

Harvey published nine issues of Li'l Abner cover dated from December 1947 to February 1949. Here are scans of the two I currently have in my collection: