''Scorchy Smith'' is an American adventure

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

created by artist

John Terry John George Terry (born 7 December 1980) is an English professional football coach and former player who played as a centre-back. He was previously captain of Chelsea, the England national team and Aston Villa. He was most recently the assi ...

that ran from March 17, 1930 to December 30, 1961. Scorchy Smith was a pilot-for-hire whose initial adventures took him across America, fighting criminals and aiding damsels in distress. Later, Scorchy traveled the world fighting spies and foreign aggression.

Publication history

Terry and Sickles

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...

's 1927 transatlantic flight increased interest in aviation, and together with several other flight-related adventure strips, ''Scorchy Smith'' debuted in 1930, created by

for

AP Newsfeatures AP Newsfeatures, aka AP Features, was the cartoon and comic strip division of Associated Press, which syndicated strips from 1930 to the early 1960s. History Origins In February 1930, I. M. Kendrick, executive assistant to AP president Kent ...

. When Terry developed fatal

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...

in 1933, the strip was assigned to

Noel Sickles Noel Douglas Sickles (January 24, 1910 – October 3, 1982) was an American commercial illustrator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip '' Scorchy Smith''. Sickles was born in Chillicothe, Ohio. Largely self-taught, his career beg ...

; Sickles' first credited strip ran on April 2, 1934. Sickles increased the popularity of ''Scorchy Smith'', which became AP's leading strip. Sickles' impressionistic style and cinematic compositions, plus his frequent use of areas of pure black ink and

Zipatone Screentone is a technique for applying textures and shades to drawings, used as an alternative to hatching. In the conventional process, patterns are transferred to paper from preprinted sheets. It is also known by the common brand names Zip-A-T ...

shading, was dramatically different from any other cartoonist at the time.

Milton Caniff Milton Arthur Paul Caniff (; February 28, 1907 – April 3, 1988) was an People of the United States, American cartoonist famous for the ''Terry and the Pirates (comic strip), Terry and the Pirates'' and ''Steve Canyon'' comic strips. Biography ...

's mastery of the medium is frequently attributed to his collaborations with Sickles. After working on the strip for two years, Sickles estimated that ''Scorchy Smith'' was running in about 250 newspapers, which would make the syndicate about $2,500 a month. He only got paid $125 a month, so he asked the syndicate for a raise. He didn't get it, so he quit the strip to become a commercial illustrator. His last strip ran on October 24, 1936.

From Sickles to Christman

Sickles was succeeded by

Bert Christman Allen Bert Christman (May 31, 1915 – January 23, 1942) was an American cartoonist and naval aviator. He is best known as artist of the newspaper comic strip '' Scorchy Smith'', about a pilot-adventurer in the inter-war years. He was also cred ...

, who began drawing and scripting the strip November 23, 1936. Christman, a cartoonist who also co-created the ''

Sandman The Sandman is a mythical character in European folklore who puts people to sleep and encourages and inspires beautiful dreams by sprinkling magical sand onto their eyes. Representation in traditional folklore The Sandman is a traditional charact ...

'' for

DC Comics DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...

, joined the

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...

as an aviation cadet in June 1938, resigning his commission three years later to join the

American Volunteer Group The American Volunteer Groups were volunteer air units organized by the United States government to aid the Nationalist government of China against Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War. The only unit to actually see combat was the 1st AVG, pop ...

being recruited to fly for the Chinese Air Force. He was shot down, bailed out, then strafed and killed in

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

as a pilot with the AVG, by then famous as the

Flying Tigers The First American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Republic of China Air Force, nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was formed to help oppose the Japanese invasion of China. Operating in 1941–1942, it was composed of pilots from the United States Ar ...

. After Christman left ''Scorchy Smith'', a succession of artists handled the strip, including Howell Dodd and

Frank Robbins Franklin Robbins (September 9, 1917 – November 28, 1994) was an American comic book and comic strip artist and writer, as well as a prominent painter whose work appeared in museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, where one of his p ...

, who began drawing the strip on May 22, 1939. Robbins, who had never had a feature of his own before, soon developed a solid reputation for creating comic-strip adventure. A wartime sequence set in Russia drew the following comment."...''formidable reality: it creates the sense of deep snows, it is full of bitter, bloody struggle''". In 1944, he was hired by

King Features Syndicate King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editoria ...

, where he created '' Johnny Hazard'', another pilot-adventurer. Robbins' last strip ran March 12, 1944. After Robbins left the strip, it was taken on by

Edmund Good Edmund is a masculine given name or surname in the English language. The name is derived from the Old English elements ''ēad'', meaning "prosperity" or "riches", and ''mund'', meaning "protector". Persons named Edmund include: People Kings an ...

(1944-1946), Rodlow Willard (1946–1953),

Alvin Hollingsworth Alvin C. Hollingsworth (25 February 1928 – July 14, 2000),
at the George Tuska George Tuska (; April 26, 1916 – October 16, 2009),George Tuska
at the Social Security Death Index via Fami ...

(1954–1959), and John Milt Morris (1959–1961). The strip ended on December 30, 1961. Hollingsworth was long believed the last to do Sundays as well as dailies, but using online newspaper sources it was discovered that George Tuska did a daily version until July 25, 1959 with AP staff artist John Morris continuing into 1961. and a two tier Sunday version until the end of 1955. The last story George Tuska did was published (and possibly drawn) at the same time as the first strips of his new job, Buck Rogers.

Reprints

''Scorchy Smith'' was reprinted in ''

Famous Funnies ''Famous Funnies'' is an American comic strip anthology series published from 1934 to 1955. Published by Eastern Color Printing, ''Famous Funnies'' is considered by popular culture historians as the first true American comic book, following sem ...

'' and in two collections published by

Nostalgia Press Woodrow Gelman (1915 – February 9, 1978) was a publisher, cartoonist, novelist and an artist-writer for both animation and comic books. As the publisher of Nostalgia Press, he pioneered the reprinting of vintage comic strips in quality hardcov ...

in the 1970s. The daily strip from July 27, 1936, through July 30, 1938 and May 22, 1939 through March 11, 1944 by Noel Sickles, Bert Christman and Frank Robbins, have been reprinted in ''Big Fun Comics'' #1–9, (published by American Comic Archive. In 2008,

IDW Publishing IDW Publishing is an American publisher of comic books, graphic novels, art books, and comic strip collections. It was founded in 1999 as the publishing division of Idea and Design Works, LLC (IDW), itself formed in 1999, and is regularly recog ...

published via their imprint;

The Library of American Comics Library of American Comics (abbreviated as LoAC) is an American publisher of classic United States, American comic strips collections and comic history books, founded by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell in 2007. History Background Dean Mullaney ...

, ''Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles'', which reprints the complete 1933–36 ''Scorchy Smith'' run by Sickles.

References

External links

''Scorchy Smith''
at

Don Markstein's Toonopedia Don Markstein's Toonopedia (subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge) is an online encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation, initiated February 13, 2001. Donald D. Markstein, the sole writer and editor of Toonopedi ...

Archived
from the original on March 29, 2017. * {{Portal bar, Comics American comic strips 1930 comics debuts 1961 comics endings Adventure comics Aviation comics Fictional aviators Fictional American people American comics characters Male characters in comics Comics characters introduced in 1930