PART 1

PG 50:

DS: Hal Foster picture traced from photo on page 65 of HAL FOSTER PRINCE OF ILLUSTRATORS by Brian Kane (Vanguard Press, 2004); Alex Raymond picture traced from "syndicate promotional photograph" on page 89 of ALEX RAYMOND HIS LIFE AND ART by Tom Roberts; Milt Caniff picture traced from the photo on page 4 of THE COMPLETE TERRY AND THE PIRATES 1939-1940 by Dean Mullaney (IDW, 2008); Tarzan figure from panel one of Foster's 31 December 33 strip traced from page 26 of Russ Cochran's GRAPHIC GALLERY 11 (1977); Prince Valiant on horseback from the Sunday page for 28 August 49 traced from page 2 of Russ Cochran's GRAPHIC GALLERY 7 (1976); Secret Agent X-9 figure traced from a Spanish promotional campaign for the strip (found on page 94 of ALEX RAYMOND HIS LIFE AND ART by Tom Roberts); Flash Gordon versus giants figures from the 25 June 39 Sunday page traced from page 6 of Russ Cochran's GRAPHIC GALLERY 11 (1977); Dragon Lady and soldier figures from 27 August 40 daily traced from page 291; Connie, Big Stoop, Pat Ryan and Terry Lee figures from 19 June 40 daily traced from page 261 of THE COMPLETE TERRY AND THE PIRATES 1939-1940 (IDW, 2008) (almost impossible to find full figure shots in Caniff's strips that aren't silhouettes: I moved Big Stoop down a bit so everyone would be on the same horizontal plane)

EK: Caniff relates his first in-person meeting with Foster in R.C. Harvey’s MEANWHILE - THE LIFE AND ART OF MILTON CANIFF (Fantagraphics Books, 2007) in New York in August 1940, when they went for dinner with their wives (Bunny Caniff and Helen Foster) while Foster was in town for a meeting with King Features (page 330):

“The conversation at the table was that evening was lively, a good deal of it shop talk. The discussed circulation and syndicate policies and adventures with fans. 'You know,' Foster mused at one point, 'if you and that other whippersnapper —what’s his name? Alex Raymond - if the two of you were only to die or somehow disappear, I’d have the field to myself. And then I alone would receive the adulation of the multitudes as the best funny-paper artist in the business.' Caniff had come to know Foster through his letters and so was not surprised by Foster's seeming ostentation. He knew it was mostly a masquerade, a kind of parody of self-importance."'

Caniff goes on to say, “A lot of people thought he was a conceited bastard…He had this curious conceit. Understandably, he thought well of himself: he was so damn good. I think it was his way — this was his joke. He would say these bald things about himself — so bald that you’d say, Oh Shit. Then afterwards, you’d think, Well maybe he was having me on, pulling my leg. I think he was kind of shy. Very often, a shy person as famous as he was will be kind of flamboyant. I liked him. Admired his work, but I also liked him personally.”

It's interesting Caniff's anecdote depicts Foster as having to pause to recall Alex Raymond’s name when bringing him up in conversation (especially after having come from the King Features offices), thereby implying Raymond had made a diminished impression on Foster. Some possibilities for Foster's pause: a) Caniff was embellishing when he told the anecdote for effect, b) Caniff was deliberately trying to reduce Raymond’s stature in Foster’s personal pecking order, while simultaneously raising his own place (“Hal Foster couldn’t remember Alex Raymond’s name, while I was deemed worthy enough to have dinner with him”), or c) Foster himself was trying to downplay Raymond’s effect on him when the conversation originally happened.

PG 51:

DS: Matt Clark watercolour (adapted to black and white illustration) traced from page 99 of THE LIFE AND ART OF ALEX RAYMOND by Tom Roberts where it is captioned as having been an ad for "Body by Fisher" appearing in newspapers in 1933. Jose Maria Sert and Frank Brangwyn paintings (adapted to black and white illustration) traced from Google Image: likewise the John Singer Sargeant ink sketch (Brian Kane cites all three as Foster's "artistic heroes" on page 128 of his book: I'll take his word for it).

EK: Image of Titan from collection of murals titled “American Progress,” commissioned for the interior of 30 Rockefeller centre. This particular piece is located on the ceiling of the main lobby, and is entitled “Time.” From www.rockefellercenter.com: “This dramatic ceiling mural depicts heroic-sized, Titans who symbolize the three aspects of time: Past, Present and Future. By exposing their bodies and making them muscular, Sert implies that time is both part of nature and is powerful. The Titans are portrayed evaluating man’s achievements, with the mural integrating the architecture into the subject matter—both the scales and the Titans’ feet are shown resting on actual marble columns that support the lobby ceiling, creating a panoramic vision of the weighing of man’s deeds.”

Sert received the commission after the previous artist hired for the job, Diego Rivera (husband of Frida Khalo), was said to have been fired by the Rockefellers for following his pro-communist beliefs and inserting a likeness of Lenin into his paintings for the commission.

John Singer Sargent drawing listed as “Portrait of Laurence Peter Alexander Harrison, Esq., ca. 1900, pencil on paper” at artnet.com.

PG 55:

DS: Thanks to Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library for supplying me with the promotional photo of Milt Caniff. The text is quoted in Tom Roberts' ALEX RAYMOND HIS LIFE AND ART on page 50 and cited as being from R.C. Harvey's -- then -- unpublished manuscript for MEANWHILE - THE LIFE AND ART OF MILTON CANIFF on file with the Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library.

EK: The quote as it appears in the published MEANWHILE pg. 616 - 617 (Fantagraphics Books)

“I don’t remember exactly how I met him,” Caniff said. ‘Probably ran into him when I was up in the King Features offices with Dwyer, then went to lunch somewhere, the bunch of us. Usually at one of the joints around there - like the Palm. Or I may have met him there at the Palm. Alex made quite a blast when his stuff appeared. Nothing gradual about it: he was good right off the bat. As soon as Flash Gordon came out, it startled the hell out of everybody. I remember reading his stuff every day and enjoying it very much, but I never thought of him in terms of a rival. We were rivals because we were shooting for the same audience to some extent. I was doing an adventure thing in faraway places, and he was doing space adventure and a crime story, close-up in this country. But I never thought in terms of him being a bitter rival - a mean, old hate-his-guts rival. I had great admiration for him. And this is nothing about my character at all; it was just that I admired what he did as well as he did it. His style wasn’t my bag at all. As Noel Sickles used to say, I don’t want to draw anybody whose pants are pressed. It’s much more fun to do wrinkles than a knife edge.”

And in AR: HS LIFE AND ART pg. 50 (underlined portion excised in MEANWHILE):

“I don’t remember exactly how I met him. Probably ran into him when I was up in the King Features offices with Dwyer [Bill Dwyer, the cartoonist then doing Dumb Dora], then went to lunch somewhere, the bunch of us. Usually at one of the joints around there - like the Palm. Or I may have met him there at the Palm. Alex made quite a blast when his stuff appeared. Nothing gradual about it: he was good right off the bat. As soon as Flash Gordon came out, it startled the hell out of everybody. He was a hotshot right from the beginning. He’d been around for a while; he’d been on staff at King Features for a couple of years before he made it big with Flash Gordon. He’d taken off a year or so to develop that style of his, real fashion plate stuff. And the boys at King Features told me it was just as if someone else had done the work; he couldn’t have done that sort of thing the previous year. And this year, he comes in doing Flash Gordon and Secret Agent - bang! - just like that. And there was nobody else; he had no ghost. Sylvan Byck [had] told me the story.

I remember reading his stuff every day and enjoying it very much, but I never thought of him in terms of a rival. We were rivals because we were shooting for the same audience to some extent. I was doing an adventure thing in faraway places, and he was doing space adventure and a crime story, close-up in this country. But I never thought in terms of him being a bitter rival - a mean, old hate-his-guts rival. I had great admiration for him. And this is nothing about my character at all; it was just that I admired what he did as well as he did it. His style wasn’t my bag at all. As Noel Sickles used to say, I don’t want to draw anybody whose pants are pressed. It’s much more fun to do wrinkles than a knife edge.”

PG 56:

DS: Top panel from the 26 January 48 STEVE CANYON Sunday page, traced from STEVE CANYON: 1948 page 18 (Checker Book Publishing, 2003);

bottom panel from the 8 April 45 TERRY AND THE PIRATES Sunday page, traced from THE ART OF THE COMIC STRIP University of Maryland Department of Art exhibition catalogue 1970-71 page 48

PG 59 - 64:

EK: A simply beautiful 2 page spread by Carson on pages 60-61. For more on Dave and Carson's process on these pages, see AMOC for Nov 12, 2016, Nov 19, 2016, Nov 26, 2016 and Mar 21, 2017

PG 66:

DS:HOGAN'S ALLEY #3 was almost impossible to find when I began my research. Sandeep Atwal found a scan of the article online, a print-out of which I have used ever since. Copies of HOGAN’S ALLEY as well as digital back issues can be found at https://www.hoganmag.com. ALEX RAYMOND’S LAST RIDE can be found at https://www.hoganmag.com/blog/alex-raymonds-last-ride.

The confusion surrounding the origin and production of the piece -- which we will examine in due course -- seem to me another example of Comic Art Metaphysics in action, a long-term recoil which continued …and continues...to affect Alex Raymond and the perception of him and his work decades after his death.

PG 67:

DS:As we'll see when we get there, "Alex Raymond's Last Ride" is as much a mystery to its (purported?) author and its publisher as it is to me. No transcript of the original interview with Stan Drake or copy of the tape seems to exist. (Arlen Schumer recalls that he turned in the tape to be transcribed as a Q&A and was surprised when it was published as an article).

It needs to be understood that recording was a different concept back in the cassette tape days. It was wildly extravagant to record a tape and then keep it in perpetuity. I recorded over all of my COMIC ART NEWS & REVIEWS interview tapes without thinking about it. I had the edited transcript, what did I need the tape for? Usually for recording songs off the radio and TV shows in those pre-videotape days…or more interviews.

PG 69:

DS: These are traced selected images from pages 234 (the Rip Kirby figure and bust at right) and 235 (the Rip and Honey Dorian prototypes at top and Pagan Lee prototype at bottom) of Tom Roberts' definitive ALEX RAYMOND: HIS LIFE AND ART which were captioned, respectively, by Roberts: "Rip concept drawing No.1" and "Rip concept drawing no.2…a portion of this drawing appeared in EDITOR & PUBLISHER, December 8, 1945 with the first announcement of the new RIP KIRBY strip."

PG 70:

DS: Traced selected images from pages 235 (the Rip Kirby figure and the two men) and 240 (the Honey Dorian prototypes) of Tom Roberts’ ALEX RAYMOND: HIS LIFE AND ART, captioned with "More early concept drawings...later used by King Features as promotional material."

PG 71:

DS: traced from top: the second RIP KIRBY strip, 5 March 46; middle: 29 May 46; bottom: 30 August 46. The effeminacy charge seemed to have been a defence mechanism on the part of top-ranked artists who couldn't cope with the Comic Art Metaphysics of falling so far short of Raymond's unmatched abilities even at the highest levels of the field.

Al Williamson recounts the story of being a student of Burne Hogarth (definitely a "highest levels" comics illustrator) the stylized realist who had succeeded Hal Foster on TARZAN: "After about two months of going to the school, I guess maybe I talked about Raymond once too often and he just went off on a tear. He said, 'Raymond can't draw! Austin Briggs can draw rings around him. Every time Raymond draws male figures, they all look like fairies!' This went on and on. Here I am 14 years old, see [laughs] and he's absolutely raving!" ("Williamson's Warren Days" interview by Jon B. Cooke, THE WARREN COMPANION TwoMorrows Publishing, 2001)