As we've discussed before here on the blog, the New York Daily News frequently included extra features in their Sunday sections of the late 1940s to mid-60s that were never syndicated. The reason for these fillers is a little murky since there were additional Sunday features available from the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate. Perhaps because most of those other features were continuities they preferred to have gag material that could be inserted purely on a space-available basis.One of those unsyndicated gag features was Bumper to Bumper from the versatile pen of Gill Fox. According to the artist, he produced 20-30 installments per year of this series about a garageman from 1952-1963. Perhaps I just haven't seen the right issues of the Daily News comics section (which unfortunately has not been indexed in full) but I certainly have not seen anywhere near that many actually appearing there; in fact the only printed examples I've found are a pair from 1961-62. Does the Daily News still have a huge drawer full of these strips still unused, or have I had the bad luck to find the wrong sections of the Daily News?
Alan,
ReplyDeleteI found many more and have put them up on my blog about a year ago. I love Fox's work and this style appeals to me particulary. I remember that my samples ran from somewhere in 1955 to possibly 1961. At least you have another onde than I.