Mary Worth: 1943 Career Girl Drama - a Blackthorne Publishing Collection

Anyone that has ever read the "funny pages" from a newspaper is more than likely familiar with the name Mary Worth. The name is pretty much synonymous with the soap-opera-style comic strips, such as Rex Morgan, M.D. and Apartment 3-G, among others.  The strip began in 1938, although sources indicate the strip started even earlier than that in a previous incarnation as "Apple Mary," which had its beginnings in 1934.  "Apple Mary" was a strip created by Martha Orr, with art and lettering by Dale Conner and Ruth Belew, respectively.  When Orr left the strip in 1941, and this is when Allen Saunders took over the writing, and Ken Ernst came in to take over the art.  By 1940, the strip was already using "Mary Worth's Family" as a subtitle, and when Saunders and Ernst took over, it eventually transitioned to simply Mary Worth.  There is, of course, disputes regarding whether "Apple Mary" really was a precursor to Mary Worth, but respected sources, including Saunders himself, indicated it was.

 

In 1986, Blackthorne Publishing was doing a number of collection of comic strips under the "Comic-Strip Preserves" banner, including Betty Boop, Brenda Starr Reporter, and others.  One of those was Mary Worth, with, unfortunately, only had this one book.  Labeled a "1943 career girl drama," the book features a storyline that ran from October 1943 through April 1944.  A number of things surprised me about the strips as I sat down to read them.  First, the name of the strip alternates between "Mary Worth's Family" and simply "Mary Worth."  Second, and probably most surprising, is the fact that the title character actually features very little in this story!  She plays heavily in the first few strips, as she heads to Elm City where Bill Biff is to have found them a place to live, and she shows up in the last few panels to bid some of the major characters farewell, as two of them head out on military duty.  Otherwise, she is only seen in a few strips, and usually those scenes are simply as a plot device to move the characters in a certain direction!  This is a far cry from the strip I remember glancing out now and again as I was growing up, where the elderly woman was always sticking her nose into everyone's business and offering advice, whether it was solicited or not!

 

This sixth month tale is, in reality, the story of Gypsy Monez, a professional dancer from New York City.  She happens to be on the same train as Mary Worth, and she sneaks into Mary's cabin, asking her to hide her from the men that are looking for her.  Mary (and the reader) knows there is more to the story, so it goes without saying that Mary helps her sneak off the train at Elm City.  Mary opens up her new home to the young actress (over the objections of Bill Biff, who is upset to be put out of his own room!).  Soon enough, Gypsy is directing the charity benefit to support the war effort - there is only one catch - she must use the chairwoman's son in the leading role!  Gypsy is unsure until she meets the boy, who turns out to be a handsome young man.  The two quickly hit it off, but as with any good story there's a snag.  An unscrupulous man discovers by accident the secret Gypsy is keeping from everyone and threatens to expose her if she does not date him instead.  As her feelings for Bud (the chairwoman's son) grow stronger, she eventually walks away from the man blackmailing her - a decision she is sure to regret.

 

The story takes a romantic tangle of a turn when Bud's older brother comes home on leave from his service in the armed forces.  He happens to be on the same train Gypsy is on after spending time in New York City (no, I'm not going to spoil her reasons for being there - let's just say, it has to do with the resolution of the first half of the story), and, of course, the two hit it off, neither suspecting who the other really is.  Once home in Elm City, though, Rick is the one to realize his new love is actually his brother's fiance-to-be.  He tries to bow out, but his feelings for Gypsy and hers for him are too much.  Luckily, another young lady happens to come to town, and she catches Bud's eyes - and with a little help from Mary Worth, the entangled lives become untangled, and we end up with two very happy couples. Well, happy that is, until the final panel, when both Rick and Bud head off into the service for their country!

 

Again, it is odd (to me, at least) that the title character appears so little in the strip.  While I didn't necessarily expect to see her in every panel, I did expect her to have a much larger role than simply an advice giver every couples of weeks or so, and matchmaker for a few strips.  We can't even go so far as to say "Mary Worth's Family" is an appropriate title, since the characters involved in this story are not a part of her family at all.  I am now curious to learn when did Mary Worth take a much more active and consistent role in her own strip? 

 

The art, by Ken Ernst, is enticing, and he gives each of his characters very distinctive looks that make them easy to identify without being named repeatedly.  His rendition of Gyspy is pretty spot on, since she is meant to be a seductive beauty - he even manages to give her clothing that only accentuates her sexy side - when she tries to wear "normal" clothes that would be appropriate in Elm City, it comes across very unnatural.  Unlike Mary Perkins, On Stage (another strip that I have been reading in collected editions),  this strip does not always concern itself with detailed backgrounds; in fact, a number of panels have no backgrounds at all - the characters simply appear against empty space.  This does not detract from the storytelling, though.  In some cases, it actually gives more focus to the character(s) speaking, so the reader is not distracted looking at what is in the background.

 

I will admit - I took a look online to see what the strip looks like today - and it is a FAR CRY from these strips from the 1940s!  While I loved June Brigman's work on Marvel's Power Pack back in the '80s, her work on the current Mary Worth strips does not hold a candle to Saunders' work represented in this collection.  It is a shame no one has collected more of these early years of Mary Worth.   I'm aware there is a mass-market paperback collection out there, as well as a comic collection published by a company called Argo; and there are several issues of a Harvey-published comics; but that is so little compared to eighty years of daily newspaper strips!  Someone needs to get work preserving these strips for future readers!

 

As a side note - I'm not really sure where the "career girl drama" banner on the cover comes from.  Mary Worth is definitely not a career girl, so the only thing I can figure is that it is referring to Gypsy Monez, who settles down in Elm City and opens a fashionable clothing store for the women about town. 

 

RATING:  9 autographed photos of Gyspy Monez out of 10 for an interesting trip back in time to the simpler times of comic strip tales filed with romance, drama, and lessons learned!

Flyin' Jenny - the collected strips

This is a collected edition I picked up on a complete lark.  I was in the Half-Price Bookstore in either Kentucky or Georgia (can't recall which at this point), and I happened to see this hanging in a plastic bag near the front counter.  I was curious as to whether this was some kind of magazine, or prose story, or a comic book, so I had the young lady behind the counter take it out so I could examine it.  Imagine my surprise to discover it was a collected edition of a newspaper strip from the late 1930s and early 1940s about a young woman flyer.  The price was definitely right, so I picked it up and brought it home, and I have finally sat down to give it a read.

Flyin' Jenny was a little known newspaper strip that ran from 1939 through 1946 (so I don't think this book collects all the published strips, although I could be wrong).  According to the introduction, the original creator, writer, and artist for the strip, Russell Keaton, graduated from flying school himself and obtained a pilot's license the same year this strip was first published.  Flyin' Jenny came out just two years after Amelia Earhart made her fateful flight, and as indicated in this book's introduction, the character was inspired by a real plane, the JN-40 World War I training plane affectionately referred to as the flying jenny (based on its call letters).  The young aviatrix who is the star of the strip is a blonde pilot who is not only a superstar at flying, but she also knows the mechanics of the planes she flies.  

The strip was distributed by the Bell Syndicate, and it ran both daily and Sunday strips, although the daily strip had a different ongoing storyline than the Sunday pages.  Researching the strip and its creator online, I discovered that while Keaton drew the strip from its inception until he fell in the mid-1940s, he gave up the writing chores to Frank Wead, and later, Glen Chaffin.  By 1942, Gladys Parker began drawing the strip, and ultimately Keaton's assistant, Marc Swayze took over the art until the strip ended in 1946 (a year after Keaton passed away at the age of 35 from acute leukemia).  The strips collected in this edition are all signed by Keaton, so I'm assuming these are the initial strips from 1930 until possible early 1940.  I wish Arcadia Publications, who printed this collection, would have collected more, as I would love to see where the strip and its characters went from here!

The art is magnificent.  I'm not sure, but I'm guessing Arcadia enlarged the panels for this publication, as there are only six panels per page, and they are considerably larger than a normal size panel you would see on the funny pages in the newspaper.  The line art, though, is magnificent - and while the characters themselves are a bit on the cartoony-side at times, the backgrounds are fleshed out nicely, and the aerial shots are amazing and spacious, giving the reader a real sense of being in the open air.  Jenny Dare herself is drawn as a beautiful blonde bombshell, despite her pants and leather jacket, and her hair style is a typical grown-out bob, with lots of voluminous curling at the bottom (sort of the same look Russell Tandy gave the original Nancy Drew on those early covers in the 1930s).  While Jenny does not have any boyfriends to speak of in these early strips, it's clear that the men admire her for her beauty and her brains!

The stories are fairly simple in the beginning.  The strip opens in this collection with Jenny getting hired by the Swiftwing Aero Fuel Coporation, at the insistence of its sales manager, Hoot Sasser.  He knows having a "Swiftwing Aero Girl" for the company will boost sales, and he's determined to play her up as the "Glamour Girl of the Air"!  Her first assignment, however, sends her to get a contract for the fuel company with Blackdart Airlines - run by a woman named Wanda Blackdart, who happens to hate Jenny.  Thus,she has to somehow prove herself in order to get that contract and keep her job - and that opportunity opens itself up when a mail plane goes down, putting the delivery behind schedule, which would be a black mark on Blackdart's record.  So, Jenny goes, grabs the mail, and gets it back in record time to save the company's record, much to the gratitude of Wanda's father, who owns the airline, and who immediately signs the contract with Swiftwing!

This leads directly into the second storyline, as the man who was competing for the contract is fired, and his position is given to a woman named Dolly Flash.  Dolly is determined to prove she is better than Jenny, so she challenges her to a cross-country race (can you see a pattern developing of strong female characters being threatened by Jenny's success?).  But both woman face problems when the man Dolly replaced suddenly throws himself into the race with the goal of showing up both of them.   Jenny has a pretty good lead, until she sees a smoke signal and lands to discovery a downed pilot who is injured and needs help.  Despite knowing it will lose her the race, she aids the man, getting him back to the final landing place well after Dolly has arrived.  But news of Jenny's rescue travels fast, and she soon becomes the object of the news reporters, who see her as a hero.  

Unfortunately, the head manager at Swiftwing doesn't see it that way, as he fires Jenny for not winning the race - only to rehire her shortly thereafter, when it turns out the man she rescued is the son of Swiftwing's biggest shareholder!  This takes readers into the third storyline, in which Jenny is sent to a boat service between Shark Island and the mainland to discover why their planes are having trouble after using Swiftwing gas.  This turns out to be the most interesting - and dangerous! - stories thus far.  Jenny discovers there is sabotage, but her nosing around puts her in the crosshairs of the saboteurs, who end up kidnapping her and are prepared to kill her - when one of the saboteurs discovers the other is actually a member of the Fifth Column Legion!  "I'm a crook but I ain't lost my patriotism! He can't pick on my country!" the man says about his co-kidnapper.  Thus, Jenny gets aid from an unexpected source, and she ultimately brings both criminals to justice and saves Swiftwing's contract with the boat service at the same time,

It's a thoroughly enjoyable strip, and quite frankly, the character would have made a great children's series book protagonist, similar I suppose to Ruth Darrow, Airplane Girl, Linda Carlton, Dorothy Dixon, or the Girl Flyers.

RATING:  10 samples of sugar-filled gas out of 10 for a high-flying adventure strip with a plucky female flyer who should never fade into obscurity!

Friday Foster - the Sunday Strips

I first heard about the character of Friday Foster when I discovered a one-issue Dell Comic that starred this African-American photographer from the '70s.  I've never been able to purchase the comic (as the prices for this one issue are astronomical!), but I always keep my eye out.  Then, one day, I discovered that David had recorded a movie on TCM called Friday Foster, starring Pam Grier in the title role.  Watching the film, sure enough, this is the same character that was in that comic book I wanted.  The movie was definitely a product of its time (known as the "Black Exploitation" era), but nevertheless, it had a pretty good story to it and was a lot of fun.  Little did I realize that Friday Foster was actually a comic strip before it was ever a comic book and movie - but I learned this when I purchased a collected edition of the Sunday strips, published by Ablaze Publishing.  The hardcover collection had more than just the Sunday strips, however - it also featured a LOT of extra material, including bios of and interviews with the creators - one of whom has a direct Nancy Drew connection!

So, let's start off talking about the strips themselves.  Friday Foster premiered on my very first birthday - January 18, 1970!  (I probably shouldn't reveal that, since it totally gives away my age!)  Syndicated by the Chicago Tribune, the strip ran for only four years (January 18, 1970 to February 14, 1974), but despite its short run, it definitely broke the mold when it came to newspaper comic strips.  While she was not the first black female character in a syndicated strip (a little known character named Torchy Brown holds that honor), she is the first syndicated strip to appear in non-black publications.  Created by James D. Lawrence, she was originally named Jet Jones before becoming Friday Foster in the actual published strip.  In the "Notes for a Biography" section of this collection, author David Moreu reveals that Lawrence was already writing other syndicated strips when he realized there were no African American characters in the comic strips - and he decided to do something about that.  The strip became the subject of a lot of talk in big cities, such as Los Angeles, New York, and others; but, apparently, all of that talk could not keep the strip alive beyond those four years.

 

To Lawrence's credit, Friday Foster was not a stereotype. She was not depicted with an afro that was so common in the '70s, and she was not only smart and sophisticated, but she quickly falls into her career as a photographer during her first storyline.  Before you know it, she's working for Shawn North, a famous photographer with whom she develops a very strong friendship over the four years of the strip.  Yet, despite moving up in the world, Friday never forgets her roots, and she's very protective of her little brother, Cleve (who is always running one scam or another).  Rounding out her supporting cast is Mame Van Clive, the editor of "She" Magazine; Simon Aubry, the art director; the enigmatic man known only as Blackhawk, who is a creative cat burglar; and Mwenye Nguvu, the mysterious Lord of the Jungle (a/k/a Slade King, former American football star) who makes more than one appearance during the run of the strip.  Each story ran, on average, eight weeks - and what is truly amazing is that even though this book only collects the Sunday color strips published from 1970 to 1974, there are no gaps in the stories.  Lawrence wrote them in such a way that even without the daily strips, the readers gets the entire story in the Sunday strips alone!  I didn't feel like I missed out on anything by reading only the Sunday strips.

Now, let's talk about those stories.  The strip begins with Friday working at The Club Senegal, a "swingin' Harlem nightspot," where Friday enjoys taking pictures of the girls, as well as the guests, hoping that some day, one of her pictures will help her crash the big time.  And wouldn't you know it?  One her photos does just that, because unbeknownst to her, one of her photographs has a couple in the background who do not want their outing to be made public.  The art director and editor of "She" magazine recognize the couple right away and put Friday in contact with Shawn North, a famous photographer - who just so happens to be engaged to the woman in the photo (who, incidentally, went to that Harlem nightspot with another man!).  This leads to a number of near-misses, subtle threats, and a fist-fight on a yacht!  This first tale is the longest storyline (as it serves to set up the characters and the series, in general), and interestingly, two of the Sunday strips (just before the last one of this story) do not feature Friday at all (which is daring for a strip to be missing its lead character for two weeks in a row!).  

The last panel of that first story sets up the next story, which involves the world's most famous "missing person" - Mike Morgan, a British pop-rock singer that supposedly died.  Friday and Shawn get pulled into the drama of Morgan's attempt to undergo plastic surgery to change his looks so he can disappear yet again - but a young woman following him may put a kink in those plans.  Just as the first story ended with a one-panel set-up for the next storyline, so does this one - and all that follow.  Lawrence basically created a formula, with eight to ten week stories ending with a lead-in to the next.  It worked well, as it kept the stories moving at a fairly fast pace, not allowing any lull that would bore the readers and turn them off of the strip.  And the stories varied greatly in subject matter - from rescuing a scarlet macaw from a man who wants to make it his trophy to a young hippie who decides she wants Shawn to be her man ... from a dangerous mission in Spain to kill a scientist to a small ivory elephant trinket that holds a very important secret ... from a fading model trying to stay relevant to a pair of star-crossed lovers destined to be kept apart ... from a stolen necklace and insurance scam to a Broadway actress determined to keep her son away from his father ... a family fighting over an inheritance ... a special effects make-up artist trapped in his own designs ... a crooked detective ... a haunted house ... a cursed idol ... a jungle bride .... and ultimately, a jealous editor from a competing magazine who wants nothing more than to take Friday out of the picture!  But, as the saying goes:  All's well that ends well!  And Friday Foster definitely ends on a high note.

It's truly a shame the strip didn't continue.  Jordi Longaron provided some truly beautiful art for the series (even if fill-in artists were occasionally used when Longaron was unable to get his pages to the publisher in time due to mailing days - remember, this was well before there was the internet!), and even though his backgrounds are not as detailed as those of Leonard Starr's Mary Perkins, On Stage strip (very few artists can do backgrounds as detailed as you'll find in that strip!), his characters and settings are such that your focus always remains on the story itself.  He is certainly a master of expressions - whether Friday is sad and crying or giving an admirer one of her "come hither" looks, or she's shocked by the discovery of a hidden room, Longaron's panels ooze with emotion that the reader can easily feel themselves.

As for the creator - James D. Lawrence - this is where the Nancy Drew connection comes in.  When I first got this book and saw "Jim Lawrence" on the cover, I didn't make the connection.  But the second I read the foreword to this collection, it dawned on me where I recognized the name from - the Nancy Drew books!  I knew that he wrote a number of the Wanderer books in the early 1980s (Race Against Time, Clue in the Ancient Disguise, The Silver Cobweb, The Haunted Carousel, and others) - but I was not aware that he had written comic strips, such as Buck Rogers, James Bond, and, of course, Friday Foster.  Lawrence was also the author of several Christopher Cool series for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, as well as Tom Swift, Jr. and rewrites for The Hardy Boys (I have correspondence from the New York Public Library between Mr. Lawrence and the Syndicate regarding his contention about creator rights to the Christopher Cool series).  So, it was with welcomed surprise that I discovered he was the creator and writer of this Friday Foster strip.  I did find it odd, though, that the book indicates Lawrence stopped writing for the Syndicate in the '70s, when the Wanderer Nancy Drew paperbacks he wrote were published into the 1980s.  (Thanks to a dear friend, Geoffrey Lapin, I have since learned that although Lawrence left writing for Syndicate for a while, he did go back in the '80s and wrote more books for them under a pseudonym so Harriet Adams did not realize it was him!  Yellowback Library, Jan/Feb 1986 No. 31, pp. 5-10).

Nevertheless, there is another comparison between Lawrence's work and the Nancy Drew connection.  After Friday Foster ended, Lawrence's children indicated in an interview that he wanted to keep the character alive, so he wrote a series of books with a very similar character called Dark Angel - a series of four books published by Pyramid Books through the book packager, Book Creations, Inc.  The painted covers for these books were done by none other than Friday Foster artist Jordi Longaron!  As can been seen by the covers, the title character in this series bears a striking resemblance to Friday Foster.  The interesting tidbit about the publication of these books is the book packager, Book Creations, Inc.  The essay about Dark Angel reveals that Book Creations, Inc. was formed by Engel in 1973 and dubbed "the fiction factory" because he and his editorial team "would sketch out ideas for series of books, contract authors to write them up, and then sell the rights to the series to published such as Dell, Pyramid, Belmont Tower, and so on" (p. 268).  Gee, does that process sound familiar?  Perhaps Engel took a cue from Edward Stratemeyer!

But, I digress!  This post is about Friday Foster, a unique character for her time and definitely a strip that is well worth the read.  While the one-issue Dell Comic was written and drawn by entirely different creators, I am still searching for a reasonably priced copy of that comic.  I already have a DVD  of the Friday Foster film, starring Pam Grier (which, by the way, is a fun movie and definitely worth watching!).  And who knows?  Maybe one day, someone will run a series of books collecting all of the daily strips - that would be something I would LOVE to see!  (Hint! Hint! Christopher Marlon, you did an amazing job with the Sundays - get us the dailies!)  Then again, I'd be curious to see what the character would be like in today's comic world.

RATING:  10 weaponized cameras out of 10 for breaking the stereotypes and providing a strip headlined by a strong, black female who could easily hold her own in a white male dominated market!