Rip Kirby, Vol. 7

$49.99

“RIP KIRBY is an absolute feast. Before now, one largely had to take on faith the

“John Prentice’s work is superb. He's one of the few cartoonists who took an important strip by a great cartoonist and did it not only justice, but in some ways, was as good as—and in some cases better than—the originator."

— Tom De Haven, author of the DERBY DUGAN trilogy

RIP

FEBRUARY 1962 TO OCTOBER 1964

KIRBY

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view that Raymond’s dramatic storytelling skills were almost on the level of his illustrative prowess. The evidence is at last back with us, and it doesn’t disappoint.” — Pol Culture

MORE THAN 800 SEQUENTIAL COMICS J

PRAISE FOR ALEX RAYMOND AND JOHN PRENTICE:

JOHN PRENTICE TAKES RIP KIRBY FROM MID-CENTURY COOL

(Different in Canada)

1962–1964

TO THE SWINGING EARLY SIXTIES IN THESE CLASSIC ADVENTURES WRITTEN BY FRED DICKENSON.

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ip Kirby, the suave gentleman detective, is the right man for his times as 1960s culture reflects a new fascination with sophisticated stories featuring James Bond and other agents, both secret and otherwise.

In this seventh volume Fred Dickenson continues to write the adventures and Al Williamson takes on a larger role as John Prentice’s art assistant. The award-winning Prentice is justly praised for both his own considerable skills and for successfully continuing the photorealistic approach pioneered by his predecessor, Alex Raymond. Included are nine complete stories in more than 800 sequential comics from February 12, 1962 to October 10, 1964—reproduced from the original King Features Syndicate proofs, insuring that every daily will look even better than when they were first published in newspapers more than fifty years ago.

JOHN PRENTICE (1920–1999) was born in Whitney, Texas.

After joining the Navy in 1939, he survived the bombing of

JOHN PRENTICE

Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, served on two destroyers in eight combat campaigns, and was honorably discharged in 1945. After the war he enrolled in the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and then moved to New York, where he eventually became a successful freelancer, illustrating paperback book covers; comic books for the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby studio, DC Comics, and others; as well as being a regular contributor to major magazines before taking over RIP KIRBY in 1956. He received the National Cartoonists Society award for “Best

HARVEY AWARD NOMINEE: BEST DOMESTIC REPRINT $49.99

Story Strip Cartoonist” in 1966, 1967, and 1986.

LibraryofAmericanComics.com • idwpublishing.com

EDITED AND DESIGNED BY EISNER AND HARVEY AWARD WINNER DEAN MULLANEY WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAY BY

BRIAN WALKER

THE FIRST MODERN DETECTIVE COMPLETE COMIC STRIPS 1962–1964

JOHN PRENTICE

FRED DICKENSON

RIP KIRBY VOLUME SEVEN 1962–1964

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

RIP KIRBY THE FIRST MODERN DETECTIVE C O M P L E T E C O M I C S T R I P S 19 6 2 –19 6 4

RIP KIRBY VOLUME SEVEN ARTWORK BY JOHN

PRENTICE STORIES BY FRED DICKENSON

THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN COMICS www.LibraryofAmericanComics.com EDITED AND DESIGNED BY Dean Mullaney ASSOCIATE EDITOR Bruce Canwell ART DIRECTOR Lorraine Turner INTRODUCTION Brian Walker MARKETING DIRECTOR Beau Smith

ISBN: 978-1-63140-034-6 First Printing, June 2014 Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors 1-410-560-7100 Published by: IDW Publishing a Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC 5080 Santa Fe Street San Diego, CA 92109 www.idwpublishing.com Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/Publisher Greg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/President Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Officer Alan Payne, VP of Sales Dirk Wood, VP of Marketing Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services

The following people and institutions have been helpful in the preparation of this volume: Randall Scott and the Michigan State University Comic Art Collection (King Features collection), Ita Golzman, Whitney Prentice, Priscilla Prentice, Neal Walker, Frank and Lori Bolle, Jon Ingersoll, Justin Eisinger, and Alonzo Simon.

Copyright © 2014 King Features Syndicate.

TM Hearst Holdings, Inc. The Library of American Comics is a trademark of The Library of American Comics LLC. All rights reserved.

Introduction © 2014 Brian Walker. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the contents of this publication may be reprinted without the permission of the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Korea.

OPPOSITE: A pencil portrait of John Prentice drawn by his son Whitney in the 1980s. (courtesy Whitney Prentice)

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

BY BRIAN WALKER

“It’s so nice that these books are coming out now so I can read collections of my father’s work.” — Whitney Prentice (from an interview with Brian Walker on April 2, 2014)

John Prentice married his second wife, Catherine Carty, on December 19, 1957.

Their first child, Whitney, was born on October 25, 1958 at Woman’s Hospital (now St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center) in New York City. The family moved to Mexico on April 8, 1960.

Whitney has some vague recollections from this early period in his life. His father arrived in Mexico first by car. Catherine and Whitney followed on a commercial flight and were held up in customs after they landed at the airport. Their local friends told them in advance to use the name of a prominent general if they encountered any trouble.

When Catherine dropped the name the customs officials became visibly nervous and whisked them through the checkpoint.

The house the Prentices rented was in the upscale neighborhood of El Pedregal in the southern part of Mexico City. They were on the bottom floor and the owners were above them. It was a modern structure with flat ceilings and a big picture window in the living room that looked out over a garden with volcanic rocks and exotic plants. The family upstairs had two German shepherds, Juniper and Petunia. Whitney learned an important lesson about dogs when he was bitten after he poured water into a garbage can while Juniper was drinking out of it.

Whitney’s sister, Cathy Anna, arrived on April 17, 1962. Her hips were dislocated at birth and, to correct the problem, she was put in a cast that went from her waist to both feet.

The cast came off after about a year but she still had to wear a brace for some time after.

John and his assistant, Al Williamson, worked in a separate studio that was walking distance from their homes. It was in a large, cavernous building and, except for two drawing boards, was sparsely furnished. Whitney recalls a model helicopter hanging from the ceiling that his father wouldn’t let him play with because it was being used as reference for the strip [see the sequence from November 2-8, 1962 on pages 91-93]. As he did throughout his entire life, John put in long hours at the studio.

Howie Post, a cartoonist friend, came to visit the Prentices in Mexico and went on a duck-hunting trip with John in the mountains. Whitney has memories of a picnic with Howie, his wife, and their daughter Andee in an old abandoned hacienda.

The Prentices returned from Mexico on September 24, 1962 and moved into a penthouse apartment on 173 West 78th Street at Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan.

Whitney shared the second bedroom with his sister. He enjoyed the view from the terrace outside and spent many hours in the candy store on the ground floor.

Whitney went to nearby P.S. 87 and fondly remembers having lunch with his father on certain designated days. “His studio was across from the south side of the Museum of Natural History and at lunchtime he would come to meet me at school and we would go to his studio. I liked liverwurst and he would have liverwurst sandwiches from a restaurant downstairs. He shared his studio with two other guys [possibly Howie Post and Leonard Starr] who were nice to me. It was in an apartment and on the wall was a big copy of Picasso’s Guernica. There were three drawing boards in a row by the windows and ink

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ABOVE: A preliminary color study for an unfinished painting

by John Prentice of his son Whitney, 1972.

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bottles, a couch, and a separate room they used for cutting board to draw on.”

The Prentices were the first of their group of New York City cartoonists to make the move to Connecticut in 1967. They rented a house on Lowlyn Drive in Westport for a year while they looked for a home to purchase. It was a split-level with a pond in the backyard. John’s studio was on the second floor of the house in what would have been the master bedroom. Whitney started sleeping in a small room with a closet, adjacent to his father’s studio, because he was getting too old to share a room with his sister.

“When we first moved out to Connecticut from New York City I didn’t like it,” Whitney recalled. “It was too quiet and I couldn’t sleep because I was used to the traffic noise. I got used to it and liked it.”

When the Prentice family lived in Westport, Whitney was in third grade at the local public school. “I didn’t do very well in school and when I came home, I would sit at one of my father’s drawing boards and do my homework.”

In 1968 they purchased a house on Lyons Plain Road in Weston, Connecticut, right on the Saugatuck River. “We had a little boat and we’d take it out, row it around, and capsize it over and over. It had flotation so it wouldn’t sink. Weston was not very built up and we could run around; there were still woods and fields. It was a really nice childhood,” Whitney reminisced.

The main house was built in the 1920s and John’s studio was in an apartment above a separate garage across the driveway. Whitney could watch his father working. “He had a drawing board by the window and from my bedroom I would look across our driveway and see him sitting at the drawing board.”

Whitney recollected many details about John’s studio in Weston. “He had a picture file he bought from an illustrator for reference. It was four or five stacked file cabinets of images, photographs, and clippings from magazines—everything from A to Z—cars, costumes from different time periods, and airplanes.

“He had a little model of a Mercury Cougar that the company had sent him because he had used one in the strip. He constantly had piles of files out for reference. Whatever he drew in the strip had to be accurate or he would get letters from readers pointing out his mistakes. He would take a lot of Polaroids of other cartoonists, their families, or friends posing for scenes in the strip.

“He had cast-metal pistols—a realistic looking Luger and Colt revolver—as well as some real pistols and revolvers. He had many interesting things on the shelves, including a miniature covered wagon made of wood, canvas, and metal with working parts—brakes, steering, a removable water barrel, anvil, and rifle. There were two foot-long models of Brahma bulls, metal models of 1930s cars, a big sombrero, a black wooden sculpture of a Mayan head, and a flintlock pistol from Napoleonic times.

“I remember looking through the files and seeing photographs. There were pictures of Mississippi river boats. They must have been from an archive. I used to make plastic models and I made a model of a Mississippi river boat that he used for reference. He found that useful.”

In the story “Peril in Paradise,” John used himself as the model for the villain, Jack [who first appears on September 4, 1962, page 74]. “My father was a gentle man,”

Images courtesy Whitney Prentice

THIS PAGE (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Proud papa John with baby Whitney, 1958; Young Whitney at his father’s drawing board in New York City, February 1964; Whitney and sister Cathy, 1968; Prentice unlocking his studio in Mexico City, early 1960s; and Catherine Prentice holding newborn Whitney, 1958.

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LEFT: John Prentice won his second award for “Best Story Strip Artist” in 1967, the same year that Rube Goldberg (right) won his namesake, the Reuben Award.

OPPOSITE: Prentice at his drawing board in his Connecticut studio, 1960s.

Whitney observed, “but he drew this character as a very dangerous and vicious s.o.b..

It’s kind of strange to see my father’s face in such an evil guise.”

Whitney described John’s daily routine. “He put in long hours at the studio— always did throughout his whole life. He would go in at nine or ten in the morning and come over for lunch and dinner but would work until eleven at night. He was always on deadline, trying to get a few days ahead so he could have some time off to play golf or do errands or appointments. It was always a concern. I think that is true with many cartoonists.

“I would come home from school and my father would be working—it seemed like he was constantly working—and my mother would be home and he’d come over for dinner. After dinner he would watch TV a little while and then he would go back to the studio and work and sit with the radio on. I remember him listening to talk radio—Jean Shepherd; Bob and Ray the comedians…”

Whitney’s second sister, Priscilla Maggie, was born on January 21, 1970. “I remember the night my mother went into labor. Cartoonist Gill Fox came over— he also worked with my father—and watched us when my father and mother went to the hospital. It was about three in the morning.”

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Catherine went back to work after Priscilla began going to school. John’s salary from King Features was based on how many papers Rip Kirby appeared in and it had, like many continuity and adventure strips during the 1970s, lost subscribers. Inflation was also eating into the family income.

Whitney drew a lot when he was younger and his father taught him about linear perspective and head construction but he eventually lost interest in John’s work. His life was heading in a different direction. “I kind of checked out. I had trouble in school because of learning disabilities and then I got into drugs and alcohol. I really went downhill from there. I dropped out of school and stopped drawing.

“I straightened out when I was twenty-one but by then I had moved out of the house. During my twenties I did mostly manual labor in boat yards. I got an apartment in South Norwalk, Connecticut and then went to live in northern California for about three years. An opportunity came for me to go to art school much later, after my mother and father were divorced.

“When I started art school in 1990 I did drawings of boats and sailing ships but once I got into life class I got more interested in doing the figure and landscapes.”

Whitney went to Paier College of Art, Lyme Academy of Fine Art, and the Graduate School of Figurative Art at the New York Academy of Art. He has a Masters Degree and is currently teaching at Paier College of Art in Hamden, Connecticut.

“When I told my father I was going to art school he tried to dissuade me from studying illustration, which was what I was going to major in. He said, ‘Study graphic design. Even I can barely get illustration work any more. The field is kind of dried up.’ But I wanted to draw, so I didn’t listen to him.

“One of my teachers in art school came up and asked me, ‘Are you John Prentice’s son?’ Another said, ‘I learned how to draw hands from reading his strip.’”

Whitney talked about his art in relation to his father’s work. “My specialty is oil paint and I draw with charcoal, pencil, and graphite. I’d like to do more watercolor and pen and ink. Pen and ink is so direct. Each brush stroke is kind of a statement.

I liked how my father used light and dark. He had to use extreme light and dark with pen and ink because it is so limited. It’s hard to do a lot of grays.”

Whitney admitted, “I’ve tried to copy my father’s drawings and I can’t draw a head like that. I have trouble getting a likeness when I have someone to look at to draw. He, and artists like him, could draw a head from memory and create a character from their imaginations and then draw the character from different angles. I used to say, ‘That’s fantastic, I couldn’t do that.’ My father would reply, ‘If you practiced enough, you could.’

“He showed me how he made up characters. He used a lot of tracing overlays.

One I remember was the head for a big tough guy. He drew the head first and then the features—eyes, nose, mouth, and eyebrows—on different pieces of tracing paper.

Then he would adjust the position of the features on the face in relation to each

Images courtesy Whitney Prentice

other to get what he wanted for that particular caricature.

“I remember when he would do layouts for a week of strips. That was a busy day for him. It was hard. He would lay out every daily and then spend the rest of the week drawing them in pencil and then he’d ink them.”

Sometimes John would pay Whitney to clean up his strips with an eraser after they had been inked. He also hired specialists like Ben Oda from King Features to do the lettering. Among his other assistants over the years were Al Williamson, Alden McWilliams, Gray Morrow, and Frank Bolle.

Leonard Starr and his wife, Betty, moved to Westport in 1970.

Leonard came over to John’s studio regularly to use the autograph machine, which was an overhead projector for tracing drawings and photographs.

Leonard and John and their wives frequently socialized with other cartoonists who lived in the area.

John never had time to do much sketching or painting on the side.

In the 1970s he started taking freelance jobs and did some color illustrations for Golf Digest. These were done in a style much different than his comic strip work.

John never turned down work because he needed the money.

Illustration assignments could be frustrating. Art directors frequently told him they wanted the illustrations done immediately and he would often have to work overnight to complete a job. There were times when he saw his art sitting in the production room days after he had finished it.

Rip Kirby provided regular income, but was also a mixed blessing.

“I think he was happy to get it in the beginning,” his son claimed. “It was a great strip and it was steady work. He felt kind of trapped by it after a while.

“He always wanted to paint—do oil painting—and we talked about it but he said he just couldn’t afford to because it wouldn’t be steady income,” Whitney explained. “He didn’t have the time while he was doing the strip.

He couldn’t stop because he wouldn’t be able to pay the bills.

“He was from Texas and there was still a lot of the cowboy in him.

He loved to see western art. We went to an exhibit of Harold Von Schmidt’s drawings and paintings at Green Farms School in Westport. He and I were amazed looking at his work.

“When I started art school I would bring my painting and work to him and he always had really helpful comments about drawing, composition, and color,” Whitney continued. “He didn’t work with color that much but he really knew it. He was a perfectionist. He used to say that with a work of art you are never completely happy with it. You always see something you could have done better.

“He talked so much about how he wanted to paint that I think some

people thought he was disappointed with life, that he felt that he hadn’t fulfilled his potential by not painting. He probably, as an artist, just wanted to try something new, just keep advancing or branching out and to paint was a way of expressing himself but I know he felt trapped financially.

“He always worked hard and was dedicated. He used to say television was killing the story strips. And [the newspapers] printed them smaller. He finally started drawing them smaller. It’s hard to get as much action going on. I noticed later that there were more headshots. In the end he was writing it, too.”

When asked about his father’s legacy Whitney said occasionally John would get a little bitter when he heard someone say he wasn’t as good as Alex Raymond. The Raymond family once sent John a letter letting him know how happy they were when the syndicate chose him to continue the strip and that he was doing a good job. Other cartoonists also respected John’s work and he got satisfaction from that.

“He developed his own style, which you can see over time,” Whitney pointed out. “I was proud for him when he won the awards from the N.C.S. He had them up on the wall in his studio.”

There are many things Whitney admires about his father’s work. “I liked how he used light and dark shapes, negative space in the compositions, rhythms in the brush strokes and line work in the faces, clothes, hair, and backgrounds. There is assertiveness in the way he drew. If one looks at each brushstroke or pen line as similar to one instrument in a piece of music, the rhythms and variety are delightful. The way he did eyebrows was masterful.”

John once tried to develop a humorous comic strip in collaboration

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with Howie Post. They would bounce ideas around, but nothing ever came of it. It was a much different challenge than creating dramatic continuity.

When he was in the Navy during World War II, John worked in the fire rooms of two destroyers, the Conyngham and the Rooks. Whitney loved listening to his father’s war stories and recounted one in detail during the interview conducted for this book.

“My father’s ship, the Conyngham, was rammed once off Guadalcanal. They had been bombarding enemy positions and they were supposed to leave by dark. At night the Japanese came down. They called it the ‘Tokyo Express.’ Japanese war ships would drop off supplies and leave by daylight because our planes would bomb them. An American transport rammed my father’s destroyer when they were maneuvering to leave. He told me there was a guy in the fire room where the boilers were and he was hanging up laundry to dry since it was so hot in there. All of a sudden the guy saw the prow of a ship coming through the side of his ship. He took off out of there as water came in. The collision knocked down one of the destroyer’s two smoke stacks on which the fellow bumped his head as he came up the escape hatch. One of the fire rooms was flooded and if another compartment flooded it would have sunk the ship. Damage

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control shored up the bulkheads—the big walls between compartments—with timbers.

The water was coming in from underneath the floor plates and my father was down under the boiler blowing out the water so it wouldn’t get into the boiler and cause the ship to lose power. While they were pumping out the ship, they hid behind an island and were just limping along at a slow speed. When the Japanese came down they could see the searchlights of the Japanese ships. They were sitting ducks if they were spotted and if they couldn’t control the flooding they were going to have to abandon ship.

Fortunately, the Japanese didn’t see them and they managed to limp away the next day.”

In addition to seeing combat during World War II, John and the other engineers would periodically have to overhaul the fire room’s machinery when their ship was in dry dock. They would go into the fireboxes of the boilers, little compartments lined with asbestos and brick, with just a rag wrapped around their faces. They would rip out all the asbestos until the air was filled with dust. No one knew about the effects of asbestos then and they breathed in a lot of it.

In 1999, John got a bad case of pneumonia that he couldn’t get rid of. It was winter and every morning he would head off to the studio he shared with cartoonist Stan Drake in downtown Westport. He couldn’t stay home because he had deadlines