Comic Strips
Created by Milton Caniff, Dickie Dare began July 31, 1933. Imaginative 12-year-old Dickie, who dreamed himself into adventures with characters from history, was joined in 1934 with writer Dan Flynn, a friend of Dickie's father, and the two had many seagoing adventures. When Caniff left in 1934 to do Terry and the Pirates, Waugh began drawing Dickie Dare in the middle of a story. In 1944, when Waugh left the strip to work on Hank (1945), his wife and assistant, Odin Burvik, took over Dickie Dare in 1944-47, followed by Fran Matera (1948–49). But Waugh eventually returned to the strip in 1950-58 with the 12-year-old Dickie growing up to become a Navy Cadet.
Between his stints on Dickie Dare, Waugh created his own short-lived but notable strip, Hank, which began April 30, 1945 in the New York newspaper PM. The story of a disabled GI returning to civilian life, Hank had a unique look due to Waugh's decorative art style, combined with dialogue lettered in upper and lower case rather than the accepted convention of all upper case lettering in balloons and captions. Some balloons were done with white lettering in black balloons. The uniqueness of Hank continued below its surface, as Waugh sought to raise questions about the reasons for war, and how it might be prevented by the next generation. Waugh discontinued it at the very end of 1945 due to eyestrain.
Read more about this topic: Coulton Waugh
Famous quotes related to comic strips:
“Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–62)