Todd Klein's Blog, page 46

CHARLES F. ARMSTRONG — HAL FOSTER’S LETTERER

From TARZAN Sunday, Aug 14, 1932, image © Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc.

From the early days of newspaper comic strips, the credited artists often hired others to help with the demanding workload. Those helpers were not named, and are generally unknown. Strip assistants did many kinds of work including background penciling, inking and lettering. Sometimes entire strips were farmed out to others with no input from the creator, as happened with MUTT AND JEFF, for instance. There were probably always some strip artists who specialized in lettering, but the earliest one I have a name for is Charles F. Armstrong, who lettered newspaper strips for Hal Foster, beginning with TARZAN, and continuing for many years on PRINCE VALIANT. Armstrong’s style, as seen above, is very regular, and at first glance looks like type, but a closer look shows the minor variations of pen lettering.

Hal Foster working on TARZAN, 1933, from “HAL FOSTER, Prince of Illustrators, Father of the Adventure Strip” by Brian M. Kane, Vanguard, 200l, image © The Harold Rudolf Foster Estate.

Harold Foster was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1892. He had a talent for drawing, and by 1921 had moved to Chicago, where he attended several art schools and worked at the Jahn & Ollier Engraving Company. Later he was hired by Chicago’s prestigious Palenske-Young Studio doing advertising illustration and magazine covers. His workmates were Paul Proehl, William Juhre and Charles F. Armstrong. In his excellent Foster biography, Brian M. Kane writes,

Charles quickly became a “fishing pal” and introduced Hal to the fantasy writings of James Branch Cabell and Lord Dunsany. Everyone at Palenske-Young was an extremely capable artist. Juhre would go on to illustrate the TARZAN daily strip after Rex Maxon’s departure. Proehl and Hal both handled the major illustration jobs for the studio. Charles F. Armstrong was a highly respected calligrapher and probably did all the lettering on the TARZAN Sunday pages. Later, Hal would hire him to do the lettering on PRINCE VALIANT.

TARZAN Sunday Aug 14, 1932, image © Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc.

In 1928 Foster agreed to produce a comic strip adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ hit novel, Tarzan of the Apes. He broke it down into 10 weeks of daily strips, five square pictures per day with typeset text below, for a total of 300 panels. It premiered in Britain in November 1928, and in America on January 7, 1929. After its 60-day run, Foster went back to advertising work and another artist, Rex Maxon, continued the strip. Burroughs was not happy with Maxon, and campaigned to have Foster brought back. When the effects of the Great Depression hit the Palenske-Young Studio in 1930, assignments for all the artists were hard to find, and with the September 27, 1931 page, Hal Foster began producing the Sunday Tarzan strip, above, with Maxon continuing on dailies. Foster parceled out the work to his studio mates with the other men doing background penciling, inking and research, and Charles Armstrong lettering. Foster paid them out of his $75 fee per Sunday, each assistant receiving $15 per week. While the earlier strip by Foster used typeset captions, for these new Sundays, he (or the United Features Syndicate) wanted lettering, and Armstrong’s work was a good choice. His lettering was very regular in an Art Deco style that today seems small for the art, but the strips were printed very large, a full tabloid page of about 11 by 17 inches, so would have been easy to read.

PRINCE VALIANT Sunday, Aug 14 1938, all Prince Valiant images © King Features Syndicate.

In 1934, Foster became dissatisfied with his financial arrangement on TARZAN, and began thinking about a new strip he could write and draw that did not need to pay royalties to another creator. The strip would take place in the days of King Arthur, and developed gradually over the next two years. In late 1936, Foster quit TARZAN and began devoting his full efforts to PRINCE VALIANT IN THE DAYS OF KING ARTHUR for King Features. The first strip appeared on Feb 13, 1937, and again was lettered by Charles Armstrong in a similar style to what he had used on TARZAN.

Detail from PRINCE VALIANT Sunday, Aug 14 1938

The lettering on VALIANT was even more Art Deco, with thin, carefully drawn shapes, larger than what he did on TARZAN, and Foster’s originals were huge, 26 by 34 inches, so the original letters would have been about 3/8 inches high. Everything was in caption form, with spoken dialogue in quotes and slanted. The strip was a success, and became one of the most popular strips in the nation, carried by many newspapers. It would remain so for decades.

Charles Armstrong and Beatrice MacGregor wedding, May 25, 1935. This and all family photos courtesy of Lynne Caldwell and Sharon Armstrong Raymond, used with permission.

Charles Armstrong was born Karl Gustav Holmstrom to Swedish parents in Liverpool, England on March 22, 1904. A few years later the family had relocated to Colorado, and then his parents divorced, and the boy’s mother changed their last name to Armstrong, and renamed her son Charles. They lived in Chicago, where Charles first attended the Glenwood Academy, then the Art Institute of Chicago. By 1925, he was working for the Palenske-Young studio, where his calligraphy skills were valued, and his friendship with fellow artist Hal Foster led to his lettering TARZAN Sundays. In 1935 he married Beatrice MacGregor and they settled in Detroit, Michigan. Their son Geoffrey was born in 1936. I’m not sure how Armstrong was still able to letter the TARZAN Sundays, they must have been sent to him by mail from Foster in Chicago at first, and in 1936, Hal Foster and his family moved to Topeka, Kansas, so artist and letterer were even further apart when PRINCE VALIANT was begun. Foster clearly valued Armstrong’s work, though, and they remained partners on the strip for many years.

Undated photo of Charles Armstrong, probably 1940s.

By 1942, Armstrong and his family were living in Boston, where Charles became a naturalized citizen in 1943. Around 1944 they moved again to the small village of Grant Corner, near North Salem, New York. Charles opened a studio, Armstrong Process Lettering, at 299 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, where he did logos and lettering for advertising. He might have commuted to the city by train on the Harlem line. Through all this, he continued to letter PRINCE VALIANT, and also in 1944, Hal Foster and his family moved to Redding, Connecticut, about a half hour’s drive east of the Armstrong home, so the friends were once more able to spend time together, and no doubt pass the strip pages back and forth more easily.

PRINCE VALIANT Sunday, Jan 16, 1949. This and all original art courtesy of Heritage Auctions.Detail from page above.

By 1949, the strip had reached its classic format, with the handsome Old English logo seen above that Charles Armstrong may have lettered. He also did Old English style calligraphy at the beginning and end of each page. His regular letters are amazingly consistent, though clearly hand-drawn.

Charles Armstrong and Hal Foster with host Ralph Edwards on the set of “This Is Your Life,” 1954. Note that Hazel Bishop was the show’s sponsor.

It’s hard now to understand just how popular PRINCE VALIANT had become by the 1950s. Hal Foster’s work was carried in hundreds of newspapers, and known by almost everyone. It was adapted for an ambitious wide-screen Hollywood film released in 1954 starring James Mason, Robert Wagner, Janet Leigh, Debra Paget and Sterling Hayden. Perhaps as part of the publicity for the film, the popular TV show “This Is Your Life” featured Hal Foster on April 14, 1954, and Charles Armstrong was one of the guests. You can see it on YouTube. Armstrong’s part is short, but the show is entertaining, and Foster seems very surprised. Some of the film’s stars also appear.

From PRINCE VALIANT Sunday, March 25, 1956

Another look at the Old English style Armstrong used for the Next Week blurb at the end of each strip. The regular lettering above is getting wider here, with the round letters closer to perfectly round. When I was asked to imitate this style a few years ago, I had to use a straight edge and circle templates, I couldn’t get close to this precision freehand. Note the faint cut lines between some lines of lettering, perhaps an editorial change made after the page was sent in.

Undated Charles Armstrong family photo

This picture shows an older Armstrong, perhaps taken in his Manhattan studio. His hair is whiter, and he’s wearing glasses for the first time in these photos. I don’t know how long Armstrong Process Lettering was in business, but probably at least into the 1960s.

From PRINCE VALIANT Sunday, June 7, 1959.

By 1959, the lettering looks different, at least on this page. It’s possible Armstrong was still doing it, but if so, the letters had become even wider, and had lost some of the distinctive style of the earlier work. Or possibly this is by someone else filling in for Charles, which I think is more likely.

From PRINCE VALIANT Sunday, Feb 7, 1960

This detail from 1960 looks more like Armstrong to me, but is perhaps not quite as consistent as his earlier work. Charles would have been nearly 56 at the time.

From PRINCE VALIANT Sunday, June 3, 1962

This again looks like Armstrong from 1962 with about the same quality as two years earlier.

From PRINCE VALIANT Sunday, March 24, 1963

On this example, where the art is more tanned with age, you can see lots of white correction paint along the tops and bottoms of the letters, and around the Old English words at the end. Is this Charles struggling a bit to keep his work up to his own standards?

From PRINCE VALIANT Sunday, June 14, 1964

By this example from 1964, the lettering of VALIANT had been passed to Ben Oda, one of the most prolific letterers of the time, who was also lettering many other newspaper strips as well as comics pages. While trying to keep the Armstrong style in place, Ben’s work has many small differences, most noticeable in the shape of his S. Ben’s Old English is well done, but also different from Armstrong’s, the capital T being a good example. Oda lettered the strip from this point until his death in 1984, well after the time that Hal Foster was drawing it. I haven’t looked closely at strips drawn after that, but by the time Gary Gianni began drawing VALIANT in 2004, the syndicate was doing the lettering with computer fonts based on Charles Armstrong’s work, which continues today.

Charles Armstrong with some of his advertising lettering, 1985.

By 1985, Armstrong and his wife had retired to Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, where these photos were taken. His family has many fond memories and photos of that home. Charles died there on November 12, 1993 at the age of 89, the same age as Hal Foster at his death in 1982. Judging by these poorly-focused examples, Armstrong’s advertising work must have been impressive and valued by clients, but it’s his lettering for Hal Foster that will long be remembered by fans of comic strips, and by letterers like me. I hope this article will help give him the credit that work deserves.

Many thanks to Alex Jay, Brian M. Kane, and Armstrong family members Lynne Caldwell and Sharon Armstrong Raymond for research help and images.

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Rereading: THE GAMMAGE CUP and THE WHISPER OF GLOCKEN by Carol Kendall

Cover and illustrations by Erik BlegvadCover and illustrations by Imero Gobbato

These fantasy novels for young readers, released in 1959 and 1965, are well-written stories with humor, creative plots, and appealing characters. They certainly owe a debt to Tolkien’s The Hobbit, but only in a general way for the most part.

In Gammage we learn about The Land Between the Mountains, a hidden valley inhabited by small people who call themselves Minnipins. They have ten small towns along the Watercress River that flows through the hills of their valley, surrounded on all side by impassable mountains. Some 880 years ago, a small band of Minnipins, led by one called Gammage, fleeing enemies during a severe drought, found their way through a tunnel carved by the river at the lower end of the valley, which was soon made impassable when rain storms returned. Finding no enemies in this place, they’ve flourished, but a small group of misfits has been growing worried about lights and sound heard near one mountain. They think their old enemies, the Mushroom people, have found a way to their home. The important Minnipins don’t believe them, so the misfits go off on their own to investigate, taking ancient armor and swords from the earliest days of the settlement. These characters are Gummy, the wandering poet, artist Curley Green, historian Walter the Earl, Muggles, the keeper of the local museum, and Mingy, the town treasurer. What they find in their search is ancient mines into one mountain that have been breached from the outside, opening a way in for the Mushroom people, who are indeed planning an attack. But how can just a few Minnipins stand against them?

In Whisper, the main characters are another small group of Minnipins from the lowest town in the valley. When the Watercress River suddenly begins to back up, no longer exiting under the mountain, their town and several more are flooded out, and those folks must escape by boat to higher ground. They meet the original heroes from Gammage, who convince them to make a heroic journey of their own to find out why the river is blocked, and hopefully unblock it. The reluctant group is Glocken the bell-ringer, town leader Gam Lutie, loner Crustabread, fisherman Scumble, and timid Silky. The heroes lead them through the ancient mines, unblocking an exit to the daunting desert outside their familiar valley, and the group begins a journey fraught with unexpected perils, and also some unexpected help at times. When they reach the other side of the mountain river tunnel, things become clearer, but even more hopeless.

These are fun reads, and still appealing to me, though I like the first book best. Recommended.

The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall

The Whisper of Glocken by Carol Kendall

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Incoming: TOP 10 COMPENDIUM

Images © DC Comics, cover art by Alex Ross, Gene Ha & Zander Cannon

Just arrived is this 1.5 inch thick trade paperback, 832 pages, collecting all the TOP 10 material originally from America’s Best Comics, now under the DC Comics imprint. Here are the original twelve-issue series and The Forty-Niners graphic novel by Alan Moore, Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, plus these miniseries: SMAX, TOP 1O BEYOND THE FARTHEST PRECINCT, and TOP TEN SEASON TWO with a few other short stories. Writers on the later material are Paul Di Filippo, Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon, artists in addition to Gene and Zander are Kevin Cannon, Jerry Ordway and Andrew Curry. This was perhaps the most complex series from ABC, imagining a city where everyone had some kind of super-power, and then imagining how difficult it would be to police it. Alan Moore’s concept is essentially a police procedural with all kinds of superhero tropes added on. Wonderful stuff. Due out April 11, check with your comics retailer, or there’s an Amazon link below. Retail price $59.99.

Top 10 Compendium

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And Then I Read: WITCHES ABROAD by Terry Pratchett

Cover art by Josh Kirby

This is the twelfth Discworld novel by Pratchett, and the second featuring three witches who mirror the Fates: maiden (Magrat Garlick), mother (Nanny Ogg) and crone (Granny Weatherwax), who first appeared together in “Wyrd Sisters.” In this book, Magrat takes on the new role of fairy godmother to a girl in faraway Genua, the Discworld analog to a city in France with overtones of New Orleans. Granny Weatherwax had hoped to find and claim the fairy godmother magic wand, but Magrat got there first. Granny has been recently troubled by things seen in mirrors: magic being worked by another powerful witch in Genua, so all three witches decide to travel there and set things to rights.

On the way, they are drawn into several fairy tales come to life, the work of the mysterious other fairy godmother in Genua, Lilith, and when they arrive in that city, they find it controlled by Lilith, who is not only a master of mirror magic that has the entire city in thrall, but a long-time foe of Granny Weatherwax. A beautiful servant girl, Emberella, is at the center of attention from all these witches, and the city of Genua can barely contain their plots and counterplots, which provide lots of amusing reading, until the final exciting and surprising confrontation between Lilith and Granny Weatherwax.

As always, entertaining and amusing work from Pratchett, with appealing characters and clever plot. Recommended.

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

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Rereading: THE SILMARILLION by J.R.R. Tolkien

SPOILER ALERT: I will be eventually talking about the plot of The Silmarillion in a general way.

First, a bit of personal Tolkien history. Around early 1964, when I was 13, my grade school librarian, Mrs. Grady, lent me her copy of The Hobbit by Tolkien. We both liked fantasy, and she thought I would enjoy it. I loved it, and it’s still my favorite book written for young readers. I bought my own hardcover copy a few years later. Mrs. Grady told me there was a much longer book about Middle Earth by Tolkien aimed at adults, which she hadn’t yet read. At the time it was only out in hardcover.

I was an avid reader, and took any chance to browse the few local bookstores in the area where I grew up in central New Jersey. On one such day I discovered this paperback from Ace of the first book of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (really one long book) with a fine Jack Gaughan cover. For a mere 75 cents I was drawn back into Tolkien’s world and my life was forever changed by it. I remember the book was so engrossing I brought it with me on a family outing, and couldn’t put it down when everyone else was enjoying the real world. I was heartbroken by the fate of Gandalf, my favorite character in this book, and desperately wanted to read the rest of the trilogy, but I had learned from Mrs. Grady or someone that these Ace paperbacks were unauthorized pirate copies that Tolkien disliked, and that Ballantine Books would soon be publishing an authorized paperback set. I decided not to buy the other Ace volumes (actually I’m not sure if I ever saw them), and to wait, but one local bookstore did have copies of the hardcovers, I think the final printing of the first American edition.

I looked at them, and I saw the beautiful maps in the back of each one, and wanted them badly, but at $5.95 each, they were beyond what I had to spend. My mom was with me, and she said she would get me the second book, The Two Towers, for Christmas if I could wait until then. (This was around August.) I agreed to that, and on Christmas day, 1964, was finally able to find out What Happened Next. On the front endpaper she wrote, “To Todd, May you get as many pleasures and rewards from life as you do from books. With love, Mother and Dad.” With The Hobbit as prelude, The Lord of the Rings remains my favorite book of all time.

I was also fascinated by Tolkien’s calligraphy in the examples of the writing of Middle Earth in the books, and it inspired me to do some of my own like the example above from about 1966. I see a lot of things there I’d do differently now, but it’s not bad for a teenager.

With the release of the Ballantine paperback editions of LOTR, Tolkien’s epic exploded in popularity, and became one of the best selling books of all time. I read everything else I could find by him, which wasn’t much. Ballantine published The Tolkien Reader, which included the humorous short medieval adventure Farmer Giles of Ham, some essays and other stories, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, poems about Middle Earth. Then there was Tolkien poems set to music by Donald Swann, The Road Goes Ever On, which included some interesting notes and more calligraphy, another short book, Smith of Wootton Major, and The Father Christmas Letters, sent by Tolkien to his children with his own illustrations. For years the publication of a LOTR prequel, The Silmarillion, was promised, but it didn’t happen until after the author’s death, when his son Christopher assembled the book from the many versions left by Tolkien. It came out in 1977, when I was 26. Of course I immediately bought it, even though the cover was disappointing, using an image from The Hobbit rather than something new.

Think how much more interesting the cover could have been with this 1928 watercolor by Tolkien depicting the mountain peak in Valinor holding the Halls of Manwe, but perhaps even Christopher Tolkien didn’t know about this at the time, you got a sense from his introduction that his father’s papers were massive and in disarray. This painting was used on a later edition.

I found the book fascinating but ultimately disappointing. It’s divided into several sections, with by far the longest focusing on The First Age, when the godlike Valar live in the west, separated from Middle Earth by a wide sea and potent spells. The first section, Ainulindale, is about the beginning of everything, and is similar to the Biblical creation story, with Eru or Ilúvatar the creator singing new beings, The Valar, to life, and they join him in that creation song. (Echoes of C.S. Lewis’s creation story of Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew are probably not a coincidence, as the authors were friends and shared their works in progress with each other.) The Valar might be considered the equivalent of Angels, and as in The Bible, the greatest of them, Melkor, turns evil, and works against all the other Valar in Middle Earth, gaining the dark name Morgoth, as told in the second short section, The Valaquenta.

The third section, Quenta Silmarillion, is by far the longest. It tells many stories of the First Age, beginning with Morgoth’s evil rise in Middle Earth, and the war between him and the rest of The Valar. In time, The Elves emerge in the darkness, and some travel west to the lands of The Valar, while others remain in Middle Earth. Morgoth works against all of them. The tales of this long section are epic, full of heroic battles, magic, curses, tragic fates, a little romance, but otherwise mostly sad, and with little charm and no humor. Here and there are brief respites for a few, but always their darker impulses and their doom finds them, and nearly everyone is eventually destroyed by Morgoth and his evil creations. There are few characters one can easily relate to among the Valar and Elves, and when Men emerge, they too are often hard to like, even when being heroic. Perhaps the best of these stories is that of the man Beren and the elf woman Lúthien, a star-crossed romance full of seemingly impossible heroics by Beren and faithful love by Lúthien that eventually does have a sort of happy ending. (Tolkien and his wife Edith have the names Beren and Lúthien on their tombstone.) Morgoth outwits The Valar, elves and men again and again, dwarves too when they turn up, and nearly all the stories are tragic and gloomy. At least Morgoth is finally defeated, but many of his creations remain to trouble Middle Earth, including his right hand man, Sauron. Some elves return to the West, but some remain to watch over Middle Earth, including Galadriel and Elrond.

Then there’s a short section about The Second Age, Akallabeth, where we learn of the rise of men and the founding of a new island stronghold for them, Númenor. For a while they grow in grace and knowledge with help from the Elves, but eventually they become tyrants in Middle Earth, and their downfall is certain when they take in Sauron and heed his advice.

Final sections tell more about the creation of the Rings of Power, and a few things that happened after the end of The Lord of the Rings. These later parts are relevant to the recent new TV series “Rings of Power” on Amazon Prime. Technically, the creators of that series did not have rights to The Silmarillion, but much of the same material is outlined in the appendices at the end of The Return of the King, the third book of LOTR. I’ve also reread those. The Amazon Prime series got me thinking about this book again, and I see now how the creators of that series made it much more appealing to me by the inclusion of humor and more down-to-earth characters and stories alongside the high drama from Tolkien’s book, as the author himself did in LOTR. Really, it’s what I was hoping for in The Silmarillion and didn’t get. I’ve already started rewatching “Rings of Power,” and I’m getting pleasure from understanding and recognizing more of the book characters than I did before, while also enjoying the entire cast and story. Yes, there are changes from the writings of Tolkien, but ones I find acceptable and at times even preferable.

To sum up, this book is important to the understanding of Tolkien’s work, but much of it is not a fun read, sadly. Still, recommended, and helpful for a richer knowledge of the history behind both LOTR and “Rings of Power.”

The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien

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And Then I Read: THE LAST MECHANICAL MONSTER by Brian Fies

Images © Brian Fies

This graphic novel first appeared as a web comic in 2013-15, which I haven’t seen. The idea behind the story, and it’s a clever one, comes from the second Fleischer Superman cartoon of 1941, “The Mechanical Monsters.” In this book, the criminal scientist who created the bank-robbing robots in the cartoon, here named as “The Inventor,” has finished serving a very long prison sentence for his crimes. He is frail and old, but still burns to get his revenge on the world. He returns to his mountain lair, and after some difficulty, gets back inside, where his former robots are a pile of smashed junk left there by Superman we suppose. Undaunted, he begins salvage and construction of a new robot. Occasional trips to town bring him in contact with several young people who know nothing of his past, a friendly bus driver, a librarian, and a former engineer now running a TV repair shop. Each of them help The Inventor, but despite that, each of them are added to the irascible old man’s hit list. Despite many set backs, The Inventor finishes his robot and sends it out to commit robbery, but things don’t go quite as planned.

A delightful story, even without the barely touched on cartoon connection, with appealing art and great characters. Recommended.

Brian Fries The Last Mechanical Monster

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Reareading: DARK HORSE OF WOODFIELD by Florence Hightower

This is one of six mystery novels for young readers by Hightower, I own and have enjoyed them all. Her mysteries are more the “solve a puzzle and find a treasure” type than ones involving major crimes, and I like that. They are beautifully written with appealing characters.

The Armistead family and their estate have fallen on hard times during the Depression, and after the deaths of several family members some ten years earlier. They were once the most prominent family in their small town, but now are struggling to keep food on the table. Gran is the patriarch, once a famous horsewoman, but now lamed by a fall, she manages the house and cooks for them. Her daughter Cynthia tries to manage their finances, and has little to work with, but does her best. Maggie and Bugsie are the children of Cynthia’s brother, who with his wife were killed in a tragic auto accident the same day their father, Gran’s husband, died of a heart attack in his study in the Woodfield estate.

Maggie’s main interest is riding her horse Stardust, a young horse, but one that shows promise as a champion jumper. She trains him whenever she can. Bugsie is fascinated by insects, and has a plan to help the family fortunes by catching butterflies and getting them to lay eggs so he can eventually sell the chrysalises. Hovering over the family is the memory of Uncle Wally, the black sheep of the family, and also a published poet. Wallace Armistead has been gaining fame for his one book of poetry, and Martin, a young reporter, comes to Woodfield to try to learn the whereabouts of letters Uncle Wally had written. A publisher is willing to pay well for them if he can find them. He soon befriends the family, and they all help him search. Meanwhile, Maggie is trying to raise money to enter the most important steeplechase race in the local horse show so she can use the prize money to help her family too. Things are complicated by a sneaky car salesman and a flighty housekeeper who might have those missing letters.

An excellent read if you can find it, as are all of Hightower’s books. Recommended.

Dark Horse of Woodfield by Florence Hightower

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And Then I Read: ART IN THE BLOOD by Bonnie Macbird

I’m not a huge murder mystery fan, but I love the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I’ve reread them all recently. Sherlock Holmes stories by others, often called “pastiches,” have been around for a long time in book form as well as film and TV. Some I’ve enjoyed, but I haven’t read many of those books. Recently I did read and very much enjoy the Enola Holmes mysteries by Nancy Springer, which I thought were original and creative new takes on the world of Sherlock that managed to remain true to the source. I saw this series recently, and thought I’d try the first one.

In the book, Holmes is in a sorry state, having fallen into depression and cocaine use after disastrous involvement with the Jack the Ripper case. His friend Dr. Watson tries to help him, but only a letter from a French singer begging his help to find her missing son is enough to get Sherlock back on his feet. The two travel to Paris to consult cabaret singer Emmeline La Victoire and learn her missing son’s father is one of the most powerful men in England, the Earl of Pellingham, and her son knows nothing of his true mother. While attending one of La Victoire’s shows, Holmes and Watson are accosted by a gang of cutthroats trying to remove them from the case permanently, which makes them all the more keen. Another case seems to be connected, a priceless Roman statue has been stolen, and Lord Pellingham, a devoted art collector, may be behind it.

Eventually Holmes and Watson arrive at Lord Pellingham’s Lancashire estate under false identities, with Holmes as a well-known art critic anxious to view Pellingham’s collection. A third mystery has surfaced at one of Pellingham’s factories, the murders of several young boys working there, and Holmes feels all these crimes can be laid at the feet of Lord Pellingham. With some help from his brother Mycroft, the missing child is found, but everyone in the process is in great danger, and more murders soon follow as Holmes tries to unravel all three mysteries.

My feeling about this book and series is that it strays too far from the Conan Doyle work in several ways that bothered me. First, by expanding what Doyle might have written as a short story into a lengthy novel, narrated by Dr. Watson but also at times by Holmes himself, we look too far into the minds and thoughts of those characters. Second, Holmes makes too many mistakes, and puts others in danger too often. A little of that goes a long way. Third, some of the subject matter seems too modern in style and approach for a Victorian story. Yes, just as horrible crimes happened then I’m sure, but the psychology of them and the most awful facts don’t fit well here.

I think one reason the Enola Holmes stories worked for me is because author Nancy Springer made a previously unknown character, Sherlock’s much younger sister, the main character and narrator. Holmes and Watson appear in the books, but usually as seen through Enola’s eyes, which gives them the kind of distance found in the Doyle stories. I don’t think I’ll be reading more of this series, but you might find it works for you. It’s certainly a page turner.

Art In The Blood by Bonnie Macbird

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And Then I Read: TIME AND CHANCE by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge

This is a profusely illustrated autobiography of a commercial artist published in 1947. It’s not a book I would have chosen myself, it was a gift, but I’m glad I read it. It’s full of illustrations, though the cover is the only full-color one.

From the endpapers on, there are groups of sepia-tone sketches and watercolors from the author’s world travels over many years, beginning in World War One.

There are also many black and white drawings in pencil or pen/brush and ink throughout. This may give the impression that the book is mainly art, but far from it. It’s 430 pages of text, full of details and incidents, and it took a long time to read. I confess to skimming some sections where the details became tedious, but mostly the book was fascinating.

Baldridge, born in 1889, grew up in poverty with a traveling single mother full of enterprise, who found work in many cities across America, and later became a traveling salesperson, and a hotel operator. At times her son Roy was farmed out to families when she was on the road, but his talent for art was something they both recognized, and by age 10 he was in Chicago, the youngest-ever student in Frank Holme’s Chicago School of Illustration. Holme became a father figure to young Roy, who studied there under Frank and J. C. Leyendecker and Frederic Goudy as well as Holme. The idea was to become a newspaper sketch artist, but that career was already being replaced by photography. Roy went to college on a scholarship and enjoyed it, and then was out in the world trying to find a living doing art.

World War One took him to Europe, where he eventually became the main artist at the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes, working alongside Harold Ross, later founder of The New Yorker, and writer Alexander Woolcott. Roy met writer Caroline Singer during the war, and they became life-partners in 1920, while Baldridge worked in Manhattan for New York magazines. Soon they were producing illustrated books together, and that launched them on a career of world travel, he sketching and she writing, that took them to China (twice), Africa, Japan, Korea, India, and the Middle East. Their books were popular and sold well, with this autobiography capping that part of their lives. They were able to retire to New Mexico in 1951, where they lived the rest of their lives. Baldridge died in 1977 at age 88.

This book took me places I haven’t been, and showed me lives of people, both poor and rich, in parts of the world I know little about that helped me understand those places better. The art is appealing, and it’s a corking good adventure at times. Recommended.

Time and Chance by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge

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Lettering for Lenny Henry

First of two autobiographies by Henry, 2019. Images © Lenny Henry.

Lettering comics, and the friends one makes doing that, can lead in some unexpected directions. I’ve worked with artist Mark Buckingham (known to me as Bucky) for many years. In addition to working with him on FABLES from DC Comics and other projects for the larger publishers, we did a signed print together, available on my website, and he’s often asked me to letter small side projects for him. Around 2018 he asked me to letter some pages that would become part of actor Lenny Henry’s autobiography, cover above. I knew the name vaguely, but I couldn’t recall ever seeing Mr. Henry’s comedy or acting work. Still, I was happy to do it for Bucky. After a bit of research, I discovered that the BBC TV series “Neverwhere,” which I thought began as a Neil Gaiman book, was actually the idea of Lenny Henry and Gaiman, the book came later. And more recently, I enjoyed Henry’s work in the “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” series on Amazon Prime, where he played a proto-Hobbit with warmth and humor.

There were several short comics sequences in the book above, illustrating moments in Lenny’s early life, this is the first page of the first one as best as I can scan it from the book.

Here’s the page as I turned it in, script by Henry, art by Buckingham. I have to admit I didn’t understand everything on these pages, but recently I finally read the book, and that made it all clear. Here, Lenny’s mother is speaking in a Jamaican patois, as she did in life, for instance.

A closer look at one panel. Bucky’s art is simple but perfectly effective, bringing out the characters well.

Recently I asked Bucky how he’d come to know and work with Lenny Henry. Here’s what he told me:

I was first introduced to Sir Lenny Henry at a meeting to discuss plans to release a Comic Relief Comic to raise money for the Comic Relief charity, of which Lenny was one of its founders, along with writer Richard Curtis, of Love Actually/ Four Weddings and a Funeral fame. They produced a one-shot title published by Fleetway in 1991. It featured Lenny, Jonathan Ross, and other celebrity hosts of the annual TV event, caught up in an adventure along side comic characters from 2000AD, Viz magazine, The Beano, The Dandy, Marvel, DC and more. Neil Gaiman, Richard Curtis, Grant Morrison and Peter Hogan created the story and edited the book. Dave Mckean painted the cover. I drew the opening sequence (with help on a couple of pages from D’Israeli and I was delighted to find myself jamming on page 1 with the chaps from Viz). A fantastic group made up of dozens of Britains best comic creators at the time worked on it. It was huge fun.

I met Lenny again during the filming of the TV series Neverwhere, and he approached me about doing some production drawings for another TV show he was developing. Sadly that one never made it to production, but we have kept in touch since, and occasionally worked on odd little things together, and I’ve been encouraging him on his move into writing. After doing some concept paintings for a film project he was developing, Lenny took me out for dinner and asked if I’d illustrate the first volume of his memoirs. As well as contributing graphic novel chapters to his novel, “Who Am I, Again?” in 2019, some of the pages were animated for the BBC  TV show “Imagine”, and one of the strips was also incorporated into Lenny’s Stage show for his national tour of the same year. We have been doing a book a year together since. And you’ve lettered them all, Todd.

As Bucky said, there have been several more short collaborations. In 2021, Henry was working on a novel for young readers, “The Boy With Wings,” and this story was added to it.

Also in 2021 we worked together on a short autobiographical story that appeared in THE MOST IMPORTANT COMIC BOOK ON EARTH: STORIES TO SAVE THE WORLD from DK Books. This one had fine coloring by Lee Loughridge.

In 2022 we again worked together on brief comics stories for the second book of Henry’s autobiography, “Rising to the Surface,” sample above. All of these projects probably went unseen by most comics readers, but they’re out there if you look for them. Perhaps there will be more in the future, I always enjoy working with Bucky, and these were all fun.

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