Scorchy Smith by Noel Sickles

Scorchy Smith
IDW's Library of American Comics presents Scorchy Smith and The Art of Noel Sickles, a comprehensive, oversized volume that collects, for the first time, every Sickles Scorchy strip, from December 1933 through November 1936. Scorchy Smith was a comic strip created by John Terry that ran from 1930 to 1961. Scorchy Smith was a pilot-for-hire whose initial adventures took him across the contemporary (1930s) United States fighting criminals and aiding damsels in distress. Later Scorchy traveled the world fighting spies and foreign aggression. When Terry developed fatal tuberculosis in 1933 the strip was assigned to Noel Sickles. Sickles' treatment of Scorchy Smith is considered to be one of the most significant developments in comic strip history. Sickles increased the popularity of the strip, which became the leading A.P. comic, creating a new school of cartooning in the process. Sickles’ impressionistic style and cinematic compositions, plus his frequent use of areas of pure black ink and Zipatone shading was dramatically different from any other cartoonist at the time. Milton Caniff’s mastery of the medium is frequently attributed to his collaborations with Sickles. In the fall of 1936 Sickles researched Scorchy Smith’s circulation, information that the Associated Press never shared with their artists. Estimating that the strip was running in 250 papers across the country, Sickles determined that the syndicate’s monthly take approximated $2,500 a month, of which he, as scripter and artist, received $125. Sickles asked for a raise and when it was refused he quit cartooning to become a magazine illustrator. Sickles was succeeded by Allen "Bert" Christman, Robert Farrell, and Frank Robbins, each of whom drew the strip in their own distictive style. After Robbins left the strip, it was taken on by Ed Good (through 1945), Rodlow Willard (1946-1954), and Milt Morris (1959-1961). It steadily declined in popularity through this era until its 1961 discontinuation.
Hardcover, 11x11, 394 pages, ....$49.99

Scorchy Smith, reprints strips from December 1933 through November 1936.