Thursday, December 9, 2010

Tommy Tween-Bob Powell-1947

I know I just ran some Bob Powell the other day but seriously...you're reading this blog and you have a problem with that? This is an early humor back-up that ran in Harvey's TERRY & THE PIRATES. In looks and dialogue, it is clearly based strongly on radio's long-running ALDRICH FAMILY with Henry (hen-REEEEEEEEEEE! ) Aldrich. Although Tommy resembles Jimmy Lydon's film version of Henry, another Harvey artist, Howard Nostrand, mentioned in his famous GRAPHIC STORY MAGAZINE interview in the early seventies that radio's Henry, Ezra Stone, personally came down on them for the resemblances. Nostrand added that the strip was changed a bit in later installments in order to appease Stone but it was still cancelled after only a couple more installments.



1 comment:

Kip W said...

I accidentally scrolled past this one so I saw the last page first, and Powell's style stood out even in thumbnails. The other feature in those Spirit sections from '42-3 was Mr. Mystic, with Powell's art at its best. It was dramatic, but never afraid to detour into the absurd.

Does anybody know who wrote those, by the way? I can sometimes figure out the artists — signatures are a hint — but the contribution of the writer is harder to piece together.