Ray Bailey assists Caniff

Bailey Rocks!
Anyone who's followed this blog knows I admire the work of Ray Bailey, a Caniff-school artist who worked both in comic books and newspaper strips.

Bailey started developing his personal style on a contemporary Western strip, Vesta West, in 1942. In 1945 he launched an aviation-themed adventure strip, Bruce Gentry. In 1951 he drew Tom Corbett, Space Cadet for a couple of years. After that he went into comic books. He did some of his best work for Dell, including TV tie-in's, movie adaptations, and several issues of Steve Canyon. After Dell spun off from Western Printing to become a separate company, Bailey continued with Western's  Gold Key line doing stories in weird titles like Boris Karloff. His last comic work seems to have been for Tower (Undersea Agent) circa 1967.

Biographies always say Bailey assisted Milton Caniff on Terry and the Pirates. I've wondered just what he did and when. Bailey's personal style looked so much like Caniff's that spotting his assistant work is a tough job. But while leafing through a pile of 1945 Terry Sundays, I found what I believe are Bailey backgrounds.

It's all in the Rocks. Nobody inked rocks exactly like Bailey, and he put them in every strip he drew. Bailey rocks were based on Caniff's rocks from his Sickles stage, the mid- to late-1930s. But Caniff rocks were Caniff rocks and Bailey rocks were Bailey's.

This rockin'-out Sunday is dated 3 June 1945.

Ray Bailey's Bruce Gentry

Bruce Gentry, meet Monsieur Alain Carter!
How do I know I'm getting senile? Let me count the ways. Actually, there's only one way: the fact that in an earlier post I said I hadn't seen any Bruce Gentry dailies beyond the couple of tear sheets I presented...totally forgetting that I had two entire stories of Ray Bailey's postwar aviation strip!

Only they aren't really Bruce Gentry. They're adventures of Alain Carter, Pilote Detective, in photocopies given me a dozen or more years ago by famous French comic artist and fine gentleman, Gerald Forton. I had entirely forgotten them. Yesterday, in another excavation through my garage inspired by reading everyone else's blogs, I stumbled upon the envelope. Gerald worked at DiC Animation at the same time I did. We often chatted about our favorite classic comics, French and American. Gerald was another Ray Bailey enthusiast, and he xeroxed these samples from French reprint comics.I have 22 pages in all, comprising two adventures. The dates were removed, of course, but they apparently start at the strip's beginning. We're introduced to Bruce's future sidekicks: South American romantic Ricardo and comic relief hep-cat Jive. Both keep their original names in the French version (though I'm sure Jive's name is pronounced Zheev). I think Jive is supposed to be a South American Indian. He got his nickname when he returned from a visit to the States obsessed with swing music and speaking jive lingo.

Bruce Gentry was an attempt to reinvent the fly-guy adventure strip to fit a postwar world. Unlike Steve Canyon, which launched the next year, the war and the military didn't play a part in the strip. Bailey wanted to start with a clean slate. This teaser ad from July 1945 makes that point outright in the final sentence. Odd that they reveal that sexy Eden Cortez works for a spy--that was supposed to be a surprise for week two! (Sidebar: it strikes me funny that in 1945 they say Caniff is famous for "Male Call." Terry who?)

Bailey's complete command of his drawing is apparent from the outset. Gone are the uncertainties of his Vesta West days. Ray learned well during his years with Caniff. Characters, backgrounds, and staging are slick and thoroughly professional. His style would evolve further. For one thing, he hadn't settled on his standard "good guy" face. For another, he plays the scenes mostly in close-ups and medium shots; in comic books he would begin using more full-figure shots. In the absence of the original strips, I want to retranslate these into English and post an entire story for other Baileyphiles. Stay tuned!

One question gnaws at me. Why does the letterer put the characters' names in ALL CAPS? Is this one publisher's idea or was it commonplace in French comics? I'm reminded of how DC comics used to put a hero's name in boldface each time it appeared. I grew up reading comic balloons "aloud" in my head, and to me boldface meant a word was spoken louder. So people in DC comics talked funny. I could accept, "Look! It's Superman!" but not, "Come right in, Superman!"

Come to think of it, certain writers used boldface in odd ways. One way to recognize Paul S. Newman's work is that he'd boldface "not" and "don't" even if it didn't make sense in context: "You go to bed, dear. I'm not sleepy yet," or "This is his car but I don't see him anywhere." Jack Kirby had a similar thing for "not." Harold Gray would boldface (or rather, underline) so many odd words that rumors popped up saying he was sending some kind of coded messages!

Ray Bailey's Undersea Agent

Under da Sea wit' U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A.
In one of my Tom Corbett posts I promised (threatened?) to dig out my Ray Bailey Undersea Agent original. Here it is!

It's page 10 from the first issue of Tower Comics' second adventure magazine (the first being the superhero book T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, of course). The Comics Code stamp on the back is from 1965. The page is enormous, roughly 13x21 inches, on heavy Strathmore vellum-finish bristol.

I love this page, despite the unfortunate racial caricature of Dr. Fang. It's Bailey at his best: superb balance of black and white, lots of attention to detail, crisp inking, and the unbeatable Bailey Rocks. The ink is thick and intensely black, the way the old Pelikan yellow-label used to be. I was surprised that Bailey used a pen much more than I'd thought. Most of the outlining on heads, bodies, and hands (even the big closeup thumbs in panel 1) are flexible steel penwork. So is the lighter hair and beards; even some of the folds on the diving suit in panel 2 appear to be pen rather than brush.

At the top is a note Ray wrote to his editor Samm Schwartz, translating the Chinese characters. The partly-cut-off note near the second panel is the word "coral," probably intended for the colorist. The caption in the final panel is a pasteover. Using a light table I discovered the text it covers is the same, but the letterer had used a slightly larger lettering size than he used on the rest of the page. Hence the extra space between lettering and panel border at the bottom of the caption. By the way, if anyone knows who this letterer is, please let me know. His lettering has a "newspaper comic strip" rather than a "comic book" style, and he's easily recognizable by his unique exclamation marks.

The hero of this strip is one Davy Jones (now there's an original name!), who resembles Pat Ryan right down to his pipe smoking. At first he was a mortal man, but in the second issue he gained a lame super-power: the ability to attract or repel things, without even having to say "Volto!" The fellow who looks like Santa Claus is his boss Professor Weston, who built an undersea lab on the site of the ruins of Atlantis. Believe it or not, "Undersea" is actually an acronym. You thought T.H.U.N.D.E.R. (The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves) was bad? How about "United Nations Department of Experiment and Research Systems Established at Atlantis"?

Undersea Agent was a 64-page comic with several characters. Bailey drew most of the Davy Jones stories, though in my opinion the first was his best. The book only lasted six issues.
When I bought the second issue back in 1966, something about Bailey's work looked "wrong" to this high-school art fan. It wasn't until last year that I learned Bailey had been inked by, of all people, Sheldon Moldoff! It's the only time I know that Bailey was inked by someone else. Moldoff did a pretty good job. Bailey must have been a very tight penciler for Shelly to come so close to his look. I wonder how this teamup came about, and why Moldoff never seems to have done any other work for Tower. At right is a sample page taken from the Who's Who website, where it's credited to Bailey alone. However Moldoff's Who's Who listing does list his Undersea Agent credit.

Tom Corbett in Color (2)

Space Jokes for Space Jocks
Here are three more of my Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Sundays. All precede the examples in my last post. The first, from 15 February 1953, begins a story documenting Tom's adventures as chairman of the Prom Committee. Now there's action! Wait a minute--check out whom Tom will be escorting to the Prom. None other than The Dragon Lady, striking one of her most famous poses (minus the gun)! Maybe there will be some action beyond Tom losing his wallet down a very 20th-century drain.

Space Dust was Bailey's answer to the "drop panel" dilemma. Since many papers by this time ran Sundays in one-third page size, the art had to be prepared so a row of panels could be omitted without confusing the story. Some creators padded the first row with irrelevant story material. The episode began in earnest in the second row. Others, like Bailey, filled most of the space with a "side feature" that wouldn't be missed. In the strip above, more cutting still had to be done to save the final "pay-off" panel. My guess is they'd cut panel 3. They might also trim panel 1 to half-size and lose the logo.

Man, I love the way Bailey draws mountains!

As the next page shows, in 1951 the Sundays were one-shot "jokes" rather than continuities. I put "jokes" in quotes because I find them really lame. Take this one from Sunday, 11 November 1951:

I notice the space station dispatchers are all sexy women. Wonder if any of them bought purple wigs and went to work for S.H.A.D.O.'s Moon Base.

My last offering comes from 20 January 1952. It's another joke strip. Nice pose and black/white balance in panel 5. Bailey used the baseball-cap-and-green-sunglasses outfit from panel 1 many times in later years, notably his comic book adaptations of Steve Canyon and the TV show Whirlybirds. In the drop section, Space Dust tackles global warming half a century early!

Tom Corbett in Color

Ray Bailey, Space Cadet
Today I offer four of the handful of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Sundays I found in a thrift shop. They come from the San Francisco Chronicle. Three seem to be from the same story. All show off Ray Bailey's great artwork.First comes the 20 April 1952 episode, featuring Ray's take on the Dragon Lady. "Sultra" even sports Madame DL's cape, not to mention the official Sophisticated Bad Babe Cigarette Holder. Note that while everyone else comes from Caniff Land, the fellow in green leaning on Venger's seat definitely hails from Mongo. Was Bailey just having some fun?In the next strip, from 28 June 1953, The Polaris crew have entered a space race. Almost everyone smokes in Tom Corbett except the cadets themselves, and as we see here the top brass is partial to stogies. This seems more like Civil War generals than futuristic Academy faculty members. Come to think of it, the officers even look like Civil War generals, sporting moustaches and full beards which weren't common in 1953's U.S. military.We learn in the 12 July 1953 Sunday that Roger believes the ship has visited an alternate earth. Tom and Astro figure he's space crazy. They may be right, considering that Roger is glassy-eyed and he wanders off in search of the "one person" who will believe him.My final offering is from 26 July 1953. From the reference to "Manning and his charts" I think this is from the same storyline, and that Lorelei in panel 3 is the "only one" Roger was looking for. Sydney Greenstreet makes a guest appearance in the first panel, smoking one of Commander Arkwright's cigars and enjoying a great rendering job. Meanwhile, in panel 4 we see some of those great Ray Bailey mountains. Then there's Lorelei herself, a classic Caniff Girl if ever there was one.
If from the above you gather I'm a Bailey fan, give yourself a 25th-century cigar. I plan to run some more Corbett Sundays next time (I have maybe eight more), and when I can scan it, I'll post my beloved Undersea Agent original which proves that Bailey still had that spark in the late 60s.

Orphan Strips

Bruce Gentry & Stony Craig

I've never been a hard-core newspaper comic strip collector. All my collections are composed of stuff I've run into those rare moments when I've had both the inclination and the money. Not surprisingly there are several strips of which I have only one or two samples.

On the heels of Ger's Appeldoorn's excellent coverage of Tom Corbett come my only two samples of Ray Bailey's earlier newspaper strip, Bruce Gentry. The first is from 15 August 1945 and the second from 1 January 1946.

We see here that most of the elements of Bailey's mature style were in place. In the later example is one of those rendered-up heads that appeared in Corbett from time to time. They only thing Bailey doesn't have down is how to draw a good mouth for his hero. The one in the last panel of the January strip looks like a Golden Age comic book artist drew it.

My other orphan for the day is Stony Craig, a war strip that would soon be on its way out. Joakim Gunnarson has a good article about Stony Craig at this address:

http://sekvenskonst.blogspot.com/2008/06/stony-craig-by-bill-draut.html

It's hard to recognize the mature Draut in this early example. By the 1960s he had grown into a solid draughtsman with considerable merits that didn't seem to catch on with the public. Bill Draut was another of those good artists whose conservative drawing and storytelling style didn't fit with the approaching age of the superhero. He was definitely more at home in romance comics. In the late 60s he did some very nice work on a war-adventure story for Harvey's comic line. I regret that I don't have a sample to post.