SECOND In the 1950s, small-town soap opera dramas stories meant for a romance-hungry female audience with newfound economic clout saturated all forms of entertainment ranging from movies to the Sunday funnies. Classic Comics Press presents the most romantic and dramatic comic strip from that era, advertising illustrator Stan Drake s The Heart of Juliet Jones. The first volume of a series that will encompass Drake s entire 30-plus years on The Heart of Juliet Jones, this edition reprints the complete dailies from March 9, 1953 to August 13, 1955, including a never-before-reprinted eight-month two-story sequence. Also featured is a biographical essay on Stan Drake by Armando Mendez and an Introduction by award-winning cartoonist and lifelong Stan Drake friend, Leonard Starr.
It is interesting to see Elliot Caplan and Stan Drake struggle with finding the best way to tell these stories. The first is too black and white, but they very soon settle down to a believable depth and more believable characters. Drake’s art becomes looser as the months pass, and his figure drawing becomes more expressive. The result is instant communication of moods and attitudes. This is not one of the great comic strips at this point, but this first volume of reprints shows that THE HEART OF JULIET JONES has the potential to be.