Tuesday, November 13, 2007

 

Obscurity of the Day: Pilgrims




In another case of delving the mysteries of obscure comic strips through the good graces of the 'net, here's another that surfaced recently. The artist, Kirk Luehrs, found his name in the mystery strips listing and sent me these samples of his strip Pilgrims. The strip was syndicated from about 1974 to 1976, first through Catholic News Service, then through something called Telefriends Inc.

I asked Luehrs additional questions about his strip but sadly never got an answer. So I'll take some guesses. The listing for his strip in E&P also credited Stephen C. Graham. I'm going to guess that he was the writer. Another guess is that the Pilgrims strip actually went by two additional titles -- Jericho Jones and Mister Demgopi -- all three titles were listed in E&P, and Luehrs said in his email that Jericho Jones was the main character in Pilgrims.

Here's the bio that Luehrs sent:
"Kirk Luehrs has been a northwest artist, writer and illustrator for over 30 years. Known as Bro Kirk, he was a contract illustrator, writer and editorial cartoonist for the Oregon Journal, and the Oregonian newspapers in Portland Oregon. He wrote and illustrated the internationally syndicated cartoon strip, Pilgrims for three years. Kirk wrote and illustrated 18 books for children and young people, 12 on contract for Word Publishing Co. Waco, Texas. He has worked as an artist, art and creative director for northwest advertising agencies, and fortune 500 companies, working in both print and electronic media. He was the owner of Luehrs Advertising for ten years. In his early years his sand and oil paintings were in high demand after his shows in the San Francisco Bay area, not to mention his psychedelic and electronically flocked posters. Kirk’s interests turned to fine line pen and ink drawings for newspaper and magazine publication for a number of years after that. Creative direction took him into the commercial and advertising phase of his career. Now that the remaining chapters in his life are growing fewer he is concentrating his efforts on the subjects that delight and amuse him painting, in acrylic’s on canvas and watercolor papers. A world traveler, he draws his inspirations from the people and events around him, both in the northwest and from his other home in the Philippines. While he will occasionally do work on commission, he prefers just having fun and painting the things that he has always wanted too. "

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# posted by Allan Holtz @ 9:36 AM
Comments:
pilgrims was a stand alone strip
jericho jones was a spin off from it.. mr demgopi was a political strip.. there were three strips in all .. steve graham was my business
partner.. i did all the writing and drawing steve did the marketing
telefrieds was a christian publishing house in the 70's that
also handled the syndication
hope that answers your questions
bro kirk
kirk a luehrs
# posted by Blogger bro_kirk : 12/02/2007 3:13 PM
 
Hi Kirk -
Thanks very much for clearing up those questions! Any chance of getting a few scans of Mr. Demgopi and Jericho Jones strips?

--Allan
# posted by Blogger Allan Holtz : 12/03/2007 9:31 AM
 
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