Al Capp's FEARLESS FOSDICK — "The Atom Bum!” — complete story

Fearless Fosdick, Al Capp's take on Chester Gould's Dick Tracy (much to Gould's displeasure), was an underpaid, overworked and over-shot-up policeman, whose devotion to duty is even greater than his devotion to his long-time girlfriend, Prudence Pimpleton.

The book, FEARLESS FOSDICK...HIS LIFE AND DEATHS, is a compilation of stories, reformatted from newspaper comic strips into comic book pages, and sold as a trade paperback book in 1956. That way the publisher could sell a black and white "comic book" in a more deluxe format for $1.00 instead of the usual comic book price of 10¢. This is story number one from the book.

David Miller gets credit for the sharp photocopies, which I scanned. Thank you, David!

Copyright © 1956 Simon and Schuster

Early comic art — THE EXPLORIGATOR — 1908 — Harry Grant Dart

Anyone interested in the history of comic art, newspapers, comic books, graphic novels or wherever else it appears, should be checking out Peter Maresca's excellent feature, ORIGINS OF THE SUNDAY COMICS, at gocomics.com.

These pages, the complete run of a a masterful 1908 fantasy page by Harry Grant Dart (1869-1938), were recently shown by Maresca. It might be presumptuous of me to show Maresca's scans, but I'm doing it as a way of turning readers not familiar with Maresca's website into regular visitors, as I am.

MODESTY BLAISE -- "The Black Pearl" -- Complete comic strip story.1966-1967

A complete Modesty Blaise continuity, "The Black Pearl," published December 12, 1966 to April 22, 1967.

Copyright © 1966-1967 Beaverbrook Newspapers, Ltd.