Stripper's Guide

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

NOTE: Jon Jason was an Obscurity of the Day way back in 2012, and at that time I candidly admitted that my review was based on only the scattered strips I was able to find then, Now with a substantial run of the strip, I'd like to give it another whack.

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 Take this quiz before you read the sample strips above. Which is the most unlikely cover profession for a globe-trotting government agent:

a) Plumber

b) CPA

c) Dog Catcher

d) Magazine Illustrator

If you picked (d), you not only picked a pretty fair answer but also the profession of Jon Jason, titular hero of today's Obscurity of the Day. Yes, Mr. Jason is a world-travelling magazine illustrator; the reason he's always visiting foreign countries is that he works as a cover artist for International Woman magazine, and of course he has to go to foreign countries to find the most beautiful women to pose for him. It actually makes some sort of twisted sense, if one ignores the fact that photography had been invented a hundred years earlier. And Jason is indeed really a magazine illustrator, he just has a little side gig as a government agent searching out Nazis hiding from justice after the war.

This was Elmer Wexler's second comic strip, but the first that he wrote. During the early days of World War II he was the original artist on Newspaper PM's  Vic Jordan, and he did a fine job on it until he went into the Marines. Coming back from the war, Newspaper PM offered him a new strip. Keen to take on the job as a solo project, Wexler took a writing course and with that under his belt, began Jon Jason on February 4 1946.  Unfortunately his lack of experience showed; his stories were labyrinthine, following too many characters and too many subplots. A really good writer might have managed to pull it off, but Wexler just didn't quite have the chops. But evidently Wexler put a lot of time into the writing, because the art, by comparison to his earlier work on Vic Jordan, looks very rushed. It gets the job done, but it isn't the pleasure to behold that we know he could produce. 

Jon Jason was available in syndication, but there were very few takers. Not only wasn't the strip itself quite up to snuff, but since Newspaper PM was a far left liberal paper, no papers with a right-leaning editorial stance would have considered it even if it was the next Terry and the Pirates. Wexler and Newspaper PM waved the white flag after one year, ending the strip on February 8 1947. Wexler ended the strip by welcoming its replacement to Newspaper PM, Elmo, in the final strip. Evidently by that time there were no syndicated clients, or perhaps Wexler produced a different farewell strip for them.

Labels: Obscurities

When Elmer Wexler got back from the war, he seems to have been rarin' to start up a new comic strip to replace the one he left behind, Vic Jordan. Wexler had gotten in barely five months on the feature, which appeared primarily in Newspaper PM, before he entered the Service for World War II.

On his return, Wexler pretty much took up where he left off. Vic Jordan, his old strip, had been cancelled in 1945 after going through a number of creative hands, but Wexler's new strip, Jon Jason, basically read as if Vic Jordan had come back from the war and was now hunting Nazis more as a hobby.

The series only lasted one year, from February 4 1946 to February 8 of the following year. It was daily-only, as were most Newspaper PM strips, and had about as much success as other strips from that newspaper in syndication -- that is, darn little.

As to the content of the strip, well, I'm perhaps not the best informed source.  Although I have a substantial number of strips from the series (about 50), they are from scattered dates. From what I can gather, Jon is a Marine pilot back from the war, and his day job is portrait painter and illustrator for the magazine* International Woman. Somehow he seems to continually stumble on hidden Nazis and run off to exotic adventures tracking them down. Late in the series he hooks up with a gorgeous lady reporter, who gets him started on his adventures in a more plausible manner. However, according to Ron Goulart in The Funnies, Jason was a private detective, and of that plot device I see no evidence. But that doesn't mean Goulart has it wrong. See, the thing is, the strip's major failing is that there never seems to be any attempt to recap or bring readers up to speed on the story. Woe to the reader who misses seeing the strip for a few days, or the new reader who would like to jump in. I can well believe that Jason was a private dick in addition to a 'cover' job as an illustrator and I just haven't read any episode in which that comes up. 

* Update 12/28/2022: I've just read the first six months of the strip. Jason is indeed a painter, employed by International Woman magazine to paint cover portraits. His constant wrangling with Nazis is a product of his travels to paint his exotic subjects. The stories are slow-moving and not terribly well-plotted.

One of the better though less well-known of the war strips was Vic Jordan. American publicist Jordan was caught in Paris when the Nazis took over and he became a member of the French resistance. The strip was several notches more realistic and better-written than the standard fare. Vic doesn't defeat a whole battalion at his whim, like many wartime strips, but he did engage in smaller and more realistic assignments like blowing up bridges, smuggling out downed airmen, and, in our story above, help to blow up a munitions factory that has been taken over by French workers. When France was liberated in 1944 Jordan took his base of operations right into Nazi Germany where he continued his derring-do until victory in Europe ended his career.

The daily and Sunday strip started the week before Pearl Harbor on December 1 1941. It was ostensibly written by 'Tom Paine', who was in actuality the team of Kermit Jaediker and Charles Zerner. The strip went through a succession of artists; the first was Elmer Wexler. Wexler went into the military but managed to finish out six months on the strip; his last daily was May 30 1942, his last Sunday June 14. When Wexler left the Sunday was dropped.

Paul Norris then took over the art duties until he in turn went into the military. His stint lasted until July 10 1943. Our samples above are from his tenure. Norris was replaced by a fellow by the name of D.H. Moneypenny who hung on until February 12 1944. He was in turn replaced by someone who signed himself Robinson (Jerry perhaps?) for a two week stint ending February 26. The final artist was the excellent Bernard Baily, better known for his comic book work. He brought the strip to its conclusion on April 28 1945.

The strip was syndicated by the great liberal paper Newspaper PM. The paper was funded by Marshall Field, whose Chicago paper, the Sun, also ran the strip. Few other papers ran Vic Jordan, which is a shame. The intellectualism of PM shows through in this strip, where Nazis are never shown as bloodthirsty monsters as they are in most strips -- they are the enemy, of course, ruthless and efficient in their machinations, but nevertheless human. This alone sets Vic Jordan apart as a higher quality strip, interested more in providing realistic adventure with fleshed out characters than in mindless propaganda.

Labels: Obscurities