Going South

It's Ho, Boys, Ho, to San Dieg-e-o
Barring a last-minute change of circumstances (or heart) I'll be going to the San Diego Comic Con this weekend. The plan is to be there Saturday.

What the hell will I be doing there? I dunno. I have nothing to offer...at least I can hope to meet one or two European bloggers who may attend. See you there. Maybe.

A Sight Unseeen--6

The Comic Section That Never Was--Over and Over Again

I've been digging through my garage looking for this item for months. Finally my labors have borne fruit.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd done comic-style artwork for an episode of the TV series Remington Steele. One of the props in that show was a fake newspaper comic section. Remington and Laura are fans of "The Blaster", an adventure strip supposedly produced by curmudgeonly cartoonist Raymond Kelly, but actually ghosted by his murderous assistant, Arte Wayne. Among the art I produced was a Sunday episode (in black and white) which presented the show's opening action in comic form.

The Sunday episode art was inserted into a mockup comic section that the post-production house had lying around. The post house was the Howard Anderson Company, a legendary post-production and effects company that has been around since 1927. It goes without saying this mockup had been around a l-o-o-o-ng time...no one remembered just how long. Whenever a client needed a phony comics section, Anderson stuck new art into an empty space on the mockup and ran off a new four-page "edition."

I'm not sure exactly how they did this. These were the days before large-format copiers and computer printers. They either had an old-fashioned letterpress unit or an offset printer which they fired up for these special occasions. The copy I have doesn't have the "indentations" characteristic of letterpress printing, so I'm voting for offset. It had to have been a big machine: the fake paper is the same size as a full-sized American newspaper spread.

I was fortunate to get a spare copy of the Remington Steele edition. I present it here for two reasons: first, to give everyone a look at this comic oddity; and second, to invite you Golden Era art-hawks to tell me who drew the other features. I'm sure there are some interesting stories buried here.

Here's page one:

The first strip, "Our Street," has a 1950s UPA look to it. The strip isn't very slick and like several other features has no story. To me this implies it was made specially for the section and not taken from some cartoonist's back stock of unsold strips. Bill Carter is surely an alias.

The second strip, "Casey the Cop" by Wally Bullock (another alias?), seems amateurish to me. Or is it just "stylized"?

The third strip, "Donny and Dolly Dewlap" could conceivably have been someone's unsold strip. It delivers a gag rather than being open-ended like the last two. 'Ted Baker' is too generic to take seriously.

The fourth feature, which has no title, is drawn in a capable early-1930s adventure style reminiscent of "Tailspin Tommy". The signature is interesting: 'Jan Grippe' is unusual enough to be a real name. Google turned up two references to a 1950 movie producer with this name, but I couldn't find the pages. Then there was a Jan Grippo (b. 1906) who co-produced the Monogram "Bowery Boys" movies. The sig could be "Grippo." Maybe he started out as an artist and tried to sell a daily adventure.

The last strip, "Captain Smith", is drawn in a competent 1940s semi-realistic style...except for the main character, who is Dick Tracy under another name. Though the episode has a beginning and an end, it doesn't seem like an unsold daily. "K. Lentz" means nothing to me. IMDB didn't have any Lentzes that made sense, and the name was too vague to make a meaningful Google search. The lettering on this strip is the most professional of the bunch; it has almost a Ben Oda look to it.

And now page two:

"Uncle George" by 'Max Morgan' (surely a fake name) could be from almost any time. My guess is 1950s. The art isn't exactly bad, but it ain't great either.

"A Day at the Fair" by 'Todd' is completely unlike any other strip in this potpourri. Whoever this guy is (the signature 'Michael Kent' sounds unlikely), he must have trained as a 1930s animator. Both character design and drawing style point that way. It's a damned nice job, too.

Look who's here! "Toby" is by none other than animator extraordinaire T. Hee (real name Alex Campbell). He signed his own name and got a byline. Among his many employers was UPA (early 1950s). Given the style of "Our Street", could there be a UPA connection to this paper? Or am I grasping at straws?

"Marty" by 'Herb Klynn' appears to have been drawn by a cartoony artist drawing straighter than usual. Something about it says late-1940s to me (could it be Marty's resemblance to the Bardahl man?).

"Snips and Runty" seems to be the top row of a real (unsold) Sunday page, although the signature is probably phony. Unlike most of the strips here, the lettering appears to be professional.

"The Rovers" intrigues me. Based on both the cartooning style and the heroine's dress and hair, I'd swear this was an unsold strip from the late 20s or very early 1930s. Its pacing suggests it's part of a longer story, and its subject brings to mind all those "Joe Palooka"-style strips. Google drew a blank on 'Leo Courey'.

Page three has a couple of features I know something about:

"Gerry" is likely the work of Gerry Woolery of Playhouse Pictures, the animation studio which contracted with the Steele team to supply art for the show. It was probably done on the spot to fill the hole to the left of "Sylvia Trace."

"Sylvia Trace" is, of course, two retouched "Dallas" dailies over which I lettered new dialogue. This was from my latter days on the project, when the late Thomas Warkentin was brought on as inker. You don't need a very keen eye to recognize J. R., Pam, Bobby, and Miss Ellie under those mustaches and glasses. Gerry agreed to my leaving Thomas' and my names on the strip, since Playhouse Pictures got screen credit for the Steele art, not me.

"The Blaster" is the fake Sunday I drew. Of course I signed it 'Raymond Kelly', but using my own signature style. Some friends who saw the episode thought I'd actually signed my own name to the art.

"Dinky" seems to be signed 'Ade'. It appears to be newer than most of these strips. It has that light, casual style that started in the 60s and continues to this day.

The fourth page of the mockup merely repeats the strips on page two. Now listen up, art spotters and strip historians. Who drew these strips? When? Why? Has anyone out there seen this comic section in other TV shows or movies? Get to work! And thanks.

Sostig the Pirate

It's Time-Wrecking Time!

Recently I've been re-reading my replica collection of early Albi d'Oro issues. Albi d'Oro was a post-WWII Italian comic book from Mondadori, reprinting features which had first appeared before the war in Mondadori's weekly children's papers. I especially enjoyed issue #199, “Sostig Il Pirata” (“Sostig the Pirate”), which originated in the late 1930s.

I don't know if Ray Bradbury's “The Sound of Thunder” was the first time-travel story to warn of the perils of changing history, but it certainly left its mark upon the genre. Ever since its publication, one hasn't been able to write about time traveling without considering unintended future consequences of things chrononauts do while in the past. Not so “Sostig the Pirate.” Its heroes violate time travel laws with the gleeful abandon of city folk out to teach the rubes a thing or two. The story's audacious disregard for anything but fun makes it an enjoyable romp, a relief from the earnestness of much time-travel literature.

“Sostig the Pirate” was part of an ongoing series called I Conquistatori del Tempo (The Conquerors of Time), scripted by Federico Pedrocchi and drawn by Giovanni Scolari, who had earlier collaborated with Pedrocchi on the legendary space opera Saturno Contro la Terra (Saturn vs. the Earth). “Sostig” is a self-contained sub-story within a larger arc called “Il Fiume del Fuoco” (“The River of Fire”), the second story arc in the Conquistatori saga.

In the first story arc, Professor Everton had invented a means of traveling through time. He enlisted hunky adventurer Trevor to lead an expedition into the past. The professor, his daughter Daly (Trevor's love interest), and a couple of fellow scientists survived a harrowing series of adventures in various eras before returning to the present. Now the professor finds himself a bit short of cash. Ever-resourceful Trevor offers a neat solution:

Of course Trevor forbids Daly to go with him, and of course Daly stows away and goes with him anyway. But more of this in a moment. Since he'll be facing bloodthirsty pirates, Trevor wants to be sure he has the stronger hand. So on his trip into the past he'll be taking along a fully-armed torpedo boat!

Not long after jumping back to pirate days, Trevor discovers that Daly has invited herself along on the voyage. Surprise!

But although Trevor briefly turns into Flash Gordon when he welcomes Daly, this girl is about as far as you can get from the classic Dale Arden clinging vine. She's one tough cookie, a real scrapper, always ready--no, eager--to man the guns alongside the boys. She's also something of a hothead, as we'll see in a moment. But first, the chrononauts rescue a dying ship's captain who was set adrift in a dory after Sostig, a vicious pirate, slaughtered his crew. Before his exile the captain had heard Sostig planning his next attack, plundering a merchant vessel called the Mary-Joan..

The chrononauts have a mission. Their torpedo boat steams full speed ahead, reaching the Mary-Joan just as she's battling three of Sostig's ships. Our heroes flex their muscles and give the pirates a taste of 20th-century steel.

Sostig himself escapes. The time travelers raise their phony sails and head for Maracaibo, “the pearl of the Spanish empire.” Trevor and Daly go ashore to snoop around. They discover a proclamation from the local viceroy offering a 200,000 ducat bounty on Sostig. The loss of the reward irks Trevor. The pair decide to visit a local pub to dig for information. Trevor cautions Daly to avoid trouble, but she laughs him off: “I'm not worried! I was the Olympic women's fencing champion!”

Good thing, too. No sooner have the two seated themselves at “La Posada del Buen Retiro” than a brunette swordswoman greets them and makes eyes at Trevor. In time-honored Dale Arden tradition, the Green-Eyed Dragon immediately bites Daly. But like I said, Daly's something of a hothead:

A brawl erupts and the police arrive to break it up. A one-armed stranger helps Daly and Trevor escape the melee, but eventually they're caught and hauled before the law.

Another donnybrook ensues. The chrononauts and their new ally grab the post commander for a shield and fight their way to the upper floor. They find temporary respite behind a barred door. After gagging and tying the commander, they seek a rear exit. But when Trevor enters one room, he discovers a lovely woman--and gets another surprise.

A rather long flashback fills us in. Pedro, the one-armed man, had been a respected young officer in Maracaibo. Isobel was his beloved. Unknown to Pedro, the post commander also desired Isobel. He appointed Pedro to guard a shipload of pearls bound for Spain. Pedro protested that the course ordered by the commander ran straight through pirate territory. The commander demanded that Pedro obey orders, though he agreed to Pedro's insistence that the orders be put in writing. It turned out that the commander and the viceroy had plotted with Sostig to attack the ship, steal the pearls, and kill Pedro. Sostig would split the proceeds from the pearls with the treacherous pair, and the commander would have Isobel all to himself.

However it didn't quite work out that way. Sostig double-crossed them and kept all the loot. Though the pirate thought he'd killed Pedro, the young officer narrowly escaped death. Pedro lost an arm, but while on Sostig's ship he'd memorized a map showing the location of the pirate's treasure island.

The chrononauts quickly find Sostig's hoard, including the stolen pearls and Pedro's written orders. How about the rest of the treasure? “Of course the pearls are yours, Pedro, so you can complete your mission. As for the rest, we'll return whatever we can return. What's left over we'll divide between us.” Want to bet how much of the fortune was returnable?

Though Trevor's financial woes are at an end, Sostig is still at large. It's time to make him pay. The torpedo boat soon catches up with the renegade. Its deck guns blow Sostig's masts away. Then Daly and Trevor's machine guns feed the pirate crew hot lead until they agree to turn over their captain.

Sostig is gone, but there remains the matter of the traitorous viceroy and post commander back in Maracaibo. Anchoring beyond the range of the forts' guns, Trevor marches into the royal headquarters and demands the 200,000 ducat reward for Sostig--as well as a few other things.

You don't mess with Italians!

The commander sends his strongest warship out to punish the upstarts, but...well...

All's right with the world, Pedro is reinstated and marries his lovely Isobel, the treacherous officers have left town, and except maybe for several hundred dead soldiers and pirates, everyone's happy. On to new adventures!

Yep, they don't make 'em like that any more!

Stuff I've Done--3

Research Meets Reality
I have a presence in the amateur/semipro art community, DeviantArt. It's my "rest of me" site, where I post art, photos, and ramblings just because I feel like it, not because of their thematic significance. If you're so inclined you can visit it at ronharris.deviantart.com.

Recently I unearthed and posted some old background drawings from my TV animation days. I have always liked this one, depicting a Parisian cafe:
In my notes I identified this as a BG from the old Dinosaucers series. However subsequent conversation with a rabid Dinosaucers fan (they really exist!) suggests it came from another show. Maybe Karate Kid. I didn't label the photocopy and I simply don't remember.

Anyway, those of you who've been to Paris were no doubt struck by the vintage American-style telephone booth in the left foreground. What is a vintage American-style telephone booth doing in Paris? It's there because the script said so. And because the art director said the script said so, and we aren't changing the script just because Paris doesn't have vintage American-style telephone booths.

This was one of the countless times that my artist's desire to get things right has collided with the practical aspects of TV production. Schedules are short (especially on Dinosaucers!), a hundred different tasks are being performed simultaneously, and cartloads of money are being spent. You can't halt the process just to correct a factual detail.

I don't pretend to any sort of moral high ground about research. Personally I love research. But I lack the obsessive drive necessary to be a research expert. I also have limited patience; eventually I want just to get on with it. I regret it deeply when I learn after the fact that I made some huge factual blunder. But I feel worse when a truly major error is detected in advance but circumstances dictate it must go through anyway. In the case of the phone booth, I could imagine every kid in Paris yelling at the screen, "What is that stupid thing? We don't have those here!"

On one show my art director was a young
Frenchman. He was fabulously talented and knew his craft to the nth degree. He was also a hothead equipped with an endless supply of contempt which he was quick to unload upon those whom he considered morons. We were designing another show set in Paris. Paris is a favorite destination for cartoon characters. The a.d. was already pissed because the writers had got the elevator system in the Eiffel Tower all wrong.

Then came the Parisian pet shop. "Pet shop!" he roared. "Ignorant assholes! We don't even have American style pet shops in France!" [I have never been there, so I don't know, but I wonder if anyone can confirm or deny that there are no pet shops in France.] It wasn't the existence of the pet shop that sent the a.d. over the edge, though. It was the sign the writers wanted on the storefront: Maison du Pet. Now they obviously wanted to say "House of Pets" and couldn't (or chose not to) find a translation for "pet." In those pre-Internet days finding translations could involve a bit of legwork. The unfortunate thing is that in French pet means "fart."

The art director's eyes burned and his lip curled in a truly magnificent sneer as he fulminated. "Maison du pet!! Do you know what zat means?!!" (He had an almost stereotypical French accent which really took over when he was angry.) "'Ouse of Farteeng! It means 'Ouse of Farteeng! Muzzerfuckairs! Oh, zey're so smart! Zey know so much about Paris! I should let it go through. Oh, I should let it go through! On televisions all over the world: Maison du Pet!" But while the man was a hothead, he was also a dedicated professional. Maison du Pet did not go through. Instead the sign was written in English: "Pet Shop."

My one brush with "big time" television was producing bogus newspaper strip art for an episode of the lighthearted mystery-adventure Remington Steele. The story concerned a young artist working as a ghost for a rich, famous, domineering cartoonist. When the big man is murdered, our heroes deduce that the assistant killed him. They stage an elaborate hoax to trap the killer into incriminating himself.

I never met the episode's writers, but the producer was impressed by their thorough research. They wrote lots of little-known factoids into the script to lend it authenticity. For example an important clue hinged on discovering that one artist pencilled with a regular black pencil while the other drew in non-photo blue. Clever--maybe the only time non-photo blue pencils found their way onto prime time television. Unfortunately a 500-pound gorilla was sitting in the corner: the oldest, "wrongest" misconception about newspaper comics, something anyone who'd researched the field shouldn't have missed.

As part of the setup Remington Steele creates several new episodes of the dead man's strip. The trouble is, Steele draws the strip today, and it appears in the newspaper...tomorrow! Having just finished two years of struggling to maintain six-week leads on two daily strips at once, I couldn't believe my nearsighted eyes. As diplomatically as possible I mentioned the error to the producer. "No kidding?" he said. "They draw 'em months ahead?" Yes, I said. "Well," the producer replied, "we sure as hell can't do anything about it now!"

Of course he was right. The episode was in its final weeks of production. Fixing the mistake would mean throwing everything out and starting over at the script stage. No one in his right mind would suggest that. The episode aired with blunder intact. That's just how it goes...facts are nice, but only if you fit them in early enough.

Placeholder--Still Alive

I've been absent from the blog thanks to a long and extremely demanding outside project. Promise I'll be back next week...sorry for the long silence.

Technique Talk--5

How They Did It!
I have a big collection of early 20th-century how-to books on commercial art. One of my favorites is Fashion Drawing--How They Do It! by Hazel Doten and Constance Boulard. It was published in 1939 by Harper Brothers. This book has a special appeal because the publishers bound samples of drawing papers right into the book. Among them are Whatman paper, bristol board, coquille paper, and two dead technologies: Contak shading sheets and Craftint Doubletone drawing board.

From the invention of photo-engraving well into the 1960s, commercial art was obsessed with finding ways to obtain shades of grey in drawings without using halftone screens. The cost difference between a line cut and a halftone cut was substantial. Furthermore cheaper publications like newspapers and farm journals used low-grade paper on which it was difficult, if not impossible, to print good halftones.

One reason pen and ink drawings were popular was that they almost always reproduced well. Flat grey tones could be added to ink drawings using Ben Day, a process by which dot or line patterns were overlaid photographically during negative-making. The illustrator showed the engraver where to put the pattern by attaching a tracing paper overlay or by painting on the drawing with non-reproducing blue watercolor.

Of course since the Ben Day process added an extra production step, it increased costs. Materials like Contak sheets and Doubletone board allowed an illustrator to add Ben Day-like tones directly to his original. The drawing was then shot as a line cut.

I believe Contak sheets were the first self-adhesive tone sheets. These were thin transparent plastic sheets upon which was printed a line or dot pattern. The backs were coated with adhesive. To apply a tone the artist placed a sheet over his drawing and trimmed it to the proper shape with a knife. He peeled away the excess film, then rubbed the remaining piece with his fingernail or a burnisher to set the adhesive. In the 1950s Zip-A-Tone became leading brand in the shading-film field; for years illustrators used its trademark as a generic name for this type of product.

The piece of Contak film in Fashion Drawing is somewhat thicker than later Zip-A-Tone sheets, with a glossy surface. The adhesive back is covered by what appears to be extra-thin tracing paper. The artist peeled away this backing to expose the stickum, which according to the book was wax. The text explains that the top-printed pattern was easily scraped off with a blade or a matchstick, allowing the artist to remove tone from small areas. After the drawing was finished it was brushed with a fixatif to prevent further scratching. The fixed part of the sample in the book appears glossier and thicker than the rest of the sheet. The scan below includes a Contak-shaded drawing.Craftint paper was a unique item. It came in two flavors: Singletone and Doubletone. A Craftint sheet was a heavy piece of bristol board upon which a pattern was printed in almost-invisible blue ink. When the sheet was brushed with developer, a clear liquid smelling of ammonia, the pattern turned black (dark brown, really) anywhere the developer touched. Doubletone sheets used two developers. If the pattern were crossing parallel lines, Light Developer exposed only "uphill" lines while Dark Developer exposed both sets to produce a darker tone. [Note: I scanned the sample sheet and the color didn't show up, but for history's sake I'll post it anyway.]Craftint paper was expensive, but its convenience and tonal range appealed to newspaper comic artists. Noel Sickles, Roy Crane, and Mel Graff used Craftint extensively. Craftint paper was essential to Crane's style; he used it through the 60s until the shrinking size both of printed comics and of original drawings rendered the process impractical. Crane once complained that in later years his originals were so small that Craftint tones looked like chicken wire. Here are some Craftint-shaded drawings.
A sheet of Ross board was not bound into the book, probably because Ross board was thick and didn't bend well. Ross sheets were covered with a raised pattern made of a chalk-like material which could be scraped off if desired. The artist drew lines in brush and ink, then added grey tones by rubbing a lithograph crayon or a grease pencil over the surface. The surface pattern broke crayon strokes into dots which would reproduce as a line cut.

Apparently there were many varieties of Ross board. White-surfaced boards came in numerous patterns. Others were coated with black ink which could be scraped away scratchboard-fashion. The only sheet of Ross board I've ever seen was a Gray Morrow original from the black-and-white Space: 1999 comic. Its pattern was so coarse it brought memories of Roy Crane's chicken wire. I don't know how Morrow applied his usual delicate penwork without his pen constantly "falling into the holes." A drawing on Ross board is to the right of the Contak drawing above.

Ross board's younger cousin was coquille paper, which is still available. This thin drawing paper is stamped with a random granular pattern. It accepts ink, pencil, and chalk. Black Prismacolor pencil on coquille paper looks weak to the eye, but reproduces beautifully in a line cut. Almost all of the black-and-white drawings in Andrew Loomis' art instruction books were drawn this way. Combining Prismacolor (or litho crayon) with brush and ink permits a startling range of tones. The large smiling girl on the first scan was drawn on coquille paper.

Fashion Drawing provides rare insight into art materials of 70 years ago. I'm sure many other essential items vanished into time even before computers came along and finished off the whole lot.

By the way, if anyone has some Ross board lying about I'd love to give it a try.

Alberto Giolitti, Artist

A Glimpse at Studio Giolitti
Italian artist Alberto Giolitti (1923-1993) was one of my earliest comic art influences. I didn't know his name, because he never signed anything, but I loved Giolitti's dramatic, realistic art on titles like Sgt. Preston, Turok, Indian Chief, and TV and movie adaptations. I followed his path from Dell to Gold Key (where I finally learned his name), studying and swiping his figures. (At right, photo of Alberto Giolitti)

Giolitti had a long, remarkable career which took him from Italy to Argentina to the United States, then back to Italy where he set up a comic art studio. The operation grew to employ more than fifty artists, producing comics for Germany, England, France, the USA, and Italy.

Rather than repeat Giolitti's biography, I strongly recommend the official Alberto Giolitti website, maintained by his friend and co-worker Angelo Todaro as a tribute to this influential artist. The site not only has complete biographical information but also a gallery of comic stories and original art that Giolitti produced during his career. (At left, Sgt. Preston from 1954)

I'm interested in the Giolitti art studio because I'd seen many of its products over the years without knowing where they had come from. Studio work appeared in the second German Perry Rhodan series, countless English digest-size war comics and comic papers, the Whitman Starstream s-f series, and even the notorious Italian erotic comics like Oltretomba and Jacula.

Studio Giolitti opened when the artist returned from America in 1962. It seems to have petered out around 1989--Todaro is vague on this point. About the time the studio opened, Il Vittorioso, the long-running youth paper backed by the Catholic church, went belly up. A large group of veteran creative people were suddenly out of a job; many found employment with Giolitti.

Recently I obtained one of ANAF's limited edition reprint books, La Pattuglia Bianca ("The White Patrol"), collecting a Mountie series Franco Caprioli drew for France through the Giolitti studio. Caprioli was one of the legends of Il Vittorioso, and deserves a hundred articles all to himself. Gianni Brunoro interviewed the artist's daughter Fulvia for the book's introduction. Her father had always freelanced from home, so as a girl Fulvia had shared the ups and downs of the artist's career. In her interview Fulvia Caprioli gives a snapshot of Studio Giolitti in its early days. I've translated the relevant parts for you Anglophones out there. I think you'll find it interesting. (At right, a page from Turok, Son of Stone)

Ms. Caprioli begins with the failure of Il Vittorioso.

"The 1960s were really 'critical' years for our family (and perhaps for similar families of 'old guard' Italian artists). Conflict was in the air, a crisis of certain values upon which, whether they believed them or not, older generations--among them the one to which Papa belonged--had based their lives. The wind of 'revolution' penetrated even art and comics. The world was changing rapidly, technology was advancing, everyone was getting richer. And we were always getting poorer."

(At left, a prewar Il Vittorioso with Kurt Caesar art)

"In 1964, Il Vittorioso was in bad shape; it was going to shut down, so many of the paper's artists, among them Ruggero Giovannini, Renato Polese and others, presented themselves to the 'Graphic Studio of Alberto Giolitti' (as well as the editors of various newspapers, like Il Giornalino) looking for work. Papa went there, too, probably tipped off by one of his colleagues. The main reason my father accepted this work is that he was 'unemployed,' like all the other Il Vittorioso artists."

Ms. Caprioli mentions Giolitti's wife of many years, Joan, whom the artist had met while working in America. Mrs. Giolitti seems to have been the studio's business manager. It seems that Studio Giolitti shared one characteristic with many other art shops: lack of money.

"Alberto Giolitti had an art studio on the Via della Magliana, in Rome, where several other Il Vittorioso artists were working, mostly for the foreign market: France, England and Germany. Alberto Giolitti had married an American, who functioned as 'manager' and maintained the business relationship with the foreign publishers, particularly in England. I would go to the studio with Papa when he had to turn in his work. It was a somewhat squalid place, on the outskirts of town; there were still farms around it.

"I remember Alberto Giolitti well: the classic 'Romano,' dark, not too tall, with a lively face, a bit superficial. His father had the famous 'Gelateria Giolitti' in Rome. I also recall that many times Giolitti sent Papa home without having paid him. In fact once--and perhaps I shouldn't say this, but it's the absolute truth--we returned home on foot (hours and hours of walking!) because Giolitti hadn't paid Papa, and we didn't even have the money to take the bus. Stories of times gone by, almost 'unbelievable,' but true all the same."

Giolitti asked Caprioli to work at the Rome studio, but the artist preferred to stay at home. Working for a studio rather than a publisher was a difficult transition for Caprioli, who always took a very personal interest in his art.

"When he was doing stories for France, he continued to work as he always had, from home. Certainly, he missed the direct contact with the publisher because, even though he talked with Miss Ratier [the French editor] on the telephone, everything else was done through Giolitti. He never even had the satisfaction of seeing his work in print. You can imagine what it did to the soul of an artist like my father, to see his work, executed with such love and care, mysteriously disappear into the 'exterior,' without ever knowing anything about it: whether the readers liked it, and so on. The pages paid very little."

Unlike American shops of the forties, which broke jobs into assembly-line pieces, Studio Giolitti seems to have followed the European tradition of assigning artists jobs which they produced alone. Of course this doesn't mean the artist didn't sometimes use assistants. However the shop-style system of several artists working on a single page seems to have been rare.

Brunoro asked Fulvio Caprioli how Giolitti came to select her father to draw The White Patrol.

"Papa was already well known and appreciated in France and other foreign countries. His stories were even reprinted in Siam! ... The second reason was that Papa was fluent in French, which Giolitti wasn't. Perhaps he chose my father thinking that Papa would get on well with the scripts, which were sent in the original language."

Alberto Giolitti died in 1993. He was working till the very end, leaving behind an unfinished Tex story for Bonelli. A long list of artists, both old-timers and newcomers, had passed through Studio Giolitti's doors. The once-anonymous artist had impacted comic art in half a dozen countries. (At right, Tex by Giolitti)