CBR Live! Archive
A Friday Flea Market Mystery
You know, you read about this sort of thing -- stumbling across rare art treasures at garage sales and so on -- but you never expect it to really happen to you.
Except it did, day before yesterday.
Well, technically, it happened to Julie. My wife is the real thrift-store maven. Sometimes I follow along and browse the books, but I'm usually done in twenty minutes. When Julie wants to do real hardcore shopping, she leaves me at home, because I'm too impatient. She prefers to take her time and prowl every single aisle inch by inch, sometimes more than once, hunting for bargains.
I can't really make fun of my wife's determined shopping relentlessness any more, because on her latest solo expedition to the local Goodwill, she found an actual treasure.
"I got you a surprise, honey," was how she announced it.
Now, usually that means she's bowled some copies of Justice League Europe out of a quarter bin or something. But this was a real find, I had to agree.
A page of original comic art in a custom frame. It's the real thing -- I can see blue pencil underdrawing in places, a couple of whited-out corrections, spot-blacks where the ink was clearly laid on with a brush, painstaking hand-lettering... it's exquisite work.
"I knew you would want it," Julie said triumphantly. "I got it just as this other guy was going for it, but I was there first. He wanted it though. He just shook his head and said, 'That's a beautiful piece,' and I said, 'I know, my husband will love it.' For $3.99! Can you believe it?"
I admitted to being startled and delighted. And I do indeed love it. Apart from the work itself, it presented a tantalizing mystery, and I knew I'd have lots of entertainment trying to puzzle it out.
The mystery being -- what's it from, and who drew it?
Julie said she knew I'd like it because it was a Western, and though technically I suppose it falls in that genre, it actually stars a Mountie. That narrows it down a great deal. There aren't that many comics starring Mounties.
There are a couple of other clues, as well. It's a little too tidy and well-drawn to be Golden Age material, but the lettering style and rigid layout mark it as being just a little early for the Silver Age. So it's probably from the 1950's. Which lets out Northwest Mounties, that was a late-forties entry. And I didn't think it was from DC; I knew they didn't have any regular Mountie strips, and it didn't look like one of those "Policemen Around The World" jobs you used to see in Detective as a backup feature. Those were more educational and usually narrated in the first person.
Just eyeballing it, it looks like something from Dell. They were all about this kind of strip, and it feels like a Dell page. Searching the internet I found that Dell did indeed publish a couple of Mountie projects.
King of the Royal Mounted traded on Zane Grey's name, but he really didn't have a lot to do with the project. It was a newspaper strip syndicated through King Features, written largely by Grey's son Romer and drawn by various hands; Jim Gary is the artist that hung in there the longest. The strip was enough of a success that it grew into a movie, and a couple of Republic serials as well as other licensed projects. King eventually moved from newspaper strips and Big Little Books to actual comic books, appearing as a backup strip in Red Ryder for a while before finally getting headline status.
But I don't think this page is a King page. For one thing, the art style's all wrong. At Dell the artist on King of the Royal Mounted was mostly Bob Fujitani, the guy who went on to do the original Dr. Solar. And his art style doesn't look anything like what my Mountie page artist was doing.
Good stuff, but that's not the guy that did my mystery page.
What's more, in King of the Royal Mounted, the "King" of the title refers to the Mountie hero himself, Dave King. But on my page, the Mountie clearly calls his DOG "King."
See? So it can't be David King.
No, in the 1950's, if it was a Mountie hero with a dog named "King," it had to be... Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.
The trouble is, he's not really a comic-book character. Sergeant Preston got his start on radio, from the same outfit that was producing The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet, on a show called Challenge of the Yukon. Then, with the advent of television, Preston followed the Ranger and Joe Friday and Matt Dillon over to TV as well.
But I didn't remember Preston ever having a comic. So I checked the Grand Comics Database and by golly, there WAS a Sergeant Preston comic, from Dell, in the mid-to-late 50's.
Aha!
It didn't run that long -- a quarterly that lasted 29 issues in all, from 1952 to '58 or thereabouts. And a little more checking revealed this sample page, from that same series. (Got this off the RCMP home page, believe it or not.)
THAT page, I am certain, is by the same creative team as the one who did our thrift-shop treasure.
But who was it?
No one seems to know. The GCD only has placeholder files on the book and some cover scans. The only artist ever given any credit anywhere for working on the Sgt. Preston comic book is a fellow named Till Goodan. Wikipedia mentions Goodan as being the guy, but, well, it's Wikipedia. I wanted something a little firmer than that.
Checking further I found that Goodan was known primarily as a Western fine art painter. He produced a line of commemorative china that is a highly sought-after collector's item today. A cowboy himself, Goodan died in the saddle -- collapsed with a heart attack while riding parade in a rodeo in 1958. A great story to tell, but nothing to link him conclusively to Dell, let alone name him as the artist of this page.
Doing some serious digging by this point, the most I could turn up was that Goodan is credited by several sources as having worked on the Gene Autry licensed comic book. So, okay, he was at Dell doing licensed books in the 1950's. It COULD have been him.
But here I ran out of luck. There's no signature, no evidence of any kind on the page itself. The best I could turn up was this 1945 Gene Autry page from Four-Color #83 that I know was done by Till Goodan, so there is at least a chance to compare art styles.
Is that by the same guy that did the Sergeant Preston page I have here? Allowing for the passage of time and so on, of course. Again, I can't be sure. You figure the two pages are ten or twelve years apart, and styles change -- look what a difference ten years made in the work of Bill Sienkewicz, or Keith Giffen, or any of a dozen other examples. I've stared at the two pages for quite a while now and the best I can manage is a firm, "Could be. But maybe not."
Even if it was Till Goodan... I have a million other questions and no way to answer them. How in the world did a Sergeant Preston page from a 1950's Dell comic book end up framed under glass in Seattle, Washington? Who would want such a thing? A friend of Goodan's? A Sergeant Preston memorabilia collector? A Western-artist aficionado?
How'd it get from Dell to the hands of whoever put it in a custom frame? Was it a gift, or was it stolen? Dell didn't return original art back then, as far as I know. Somebody working at the office or the printshop lift it quietly from the files when Goodan started to get a name in the Western-art world?
And, the most puzzling thing of all... who would be so blind to the value of such a piece that they'd donate it to a Goodwill? One would think that anyone who knew anything about comics in this day and age would recognize the idea that original comic-strip art is valuable, even if they couldn't come up with a dollar amount. For that matter, I wonder why Goodwill let it go out the door at $3.99 -- the FRAME is worth more than that.
I don't know. We'll probably never know.
Julie said, "You should do a column about it and see if the readers out there have any ideas."
So here's that column.
See you next week.
- Posted on August 25, 2007 @ 11:24 AM
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24 Comments
Ron
August 25, 2007 at 11:31 am
thats really awesome, i love it when people find stuff amazing for really cheap.
this video store near where i live was given a large amount of comics from someone, and they were selling them all for a dollar. I went there and found a mint copy of Amazing Spider-Man #238, Wolverine (mini-series) #1-4, some early Flash issues, and a lot of Uncanny issues.
Rebis
August 25, 2007 at 11:42 am
Woo-hoo! Great score, Julie! Congrats, Greg! It'd be fun to have even if you never learned anything more about it. But I imagine all pieces will fall into place before too long. (Gotta love that crazy internet.)
Perry Holley
August 25, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Wow, that's a really great find, Greg. Congratulations, and good luck tracking down more info on it.
Michael
August 25, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I'm just impressed with the way you deduced all that.
Good luck!
The Hero Maker
August 25, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I am pretty Sure that your page was drawn by comic artist Alexander Toth He worked for Dell comics during that period and also drew The Sergeant Preston Of the Yukon Comic from the research I have done ! hope that helps!
The Hero Maker
August 25, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Here is the link to the early cover art of The comic if you compare the styles they are nearly identical to your piece of art. See below for link to covers:
http://www.comics.org/covers.lasso?SeriesID=13106
Cei-U!
August 25, 2007 at 2:09 pm
No, we know what Toth art looked like in the '50s (see the Dell/Disney Zorro series) and Greg's page definitely ain't Toth.
Ted Watson
August 25, 2007 at 2:39 pm
As I read this you had me worried for a while, Greg. It was so obvious to me before I finished reading the page repro that it might well be Sgt. Preston, and you didn't seem to even think about that property. Imagine my relief when I realized you were just taking dramatic license. Well done, too. Congrats on your acquisition!
DubipR
August 25, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Have you presented this article to the fellows that are on the Oddball Comics Message boards? I'm sure people like Scott Shaw! and other fellow collectors of comic knowledge might know who exactly did the page.
Great find overall...and a great article
Denn
August 25, 2007 at 3:46 pm
The lettering reminds me of th E.C. style.
Greg Hatcher
August 25, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Kind of answered your own question there. I wouldn't have gotten a column out of it if I'd just e-mailed Scott -- or Mark Evanier, or Kurt Mitchell, or Rob Allen or any of the folks that hang out at Oddball or the Classics Forum here at CBR. I know where the REAL experts are. But this way's more fun.
Julie's enjoying speculating about it too. We found an old Sgt. Preston listed in Mile High's catalog for a reasonable price and so we decided to send away for it. Maybe that will have more clues.
As far as the Alex Toth theory goes, I tend to agree with Kurt. Alex Toth did do a few licensed books for Dell but this isn't a Toth page.
Truthfully, my feeling is that if it's not Goodan then it's someone equally unknown to modern comics fans. Because all the big names that were working back then have been documented and indexed up the wazoo. My gut tells me it's someone that never worked on superheroes at all; either an artist that LEFT comics or someone that DIED before there was such a thing as a collector/fan community who started paying attention to the credits for this sort of work.
Till Goodan fills both requirements but the one sample page I've had to look at and compare isn't really conclusive, as I explained above. But if it wasn't him then it was someone like that. Remember, the art in question ended up in a secondhand shop with a bunch of other worthless prints. That doesn't happen with the famous folks. At least, I wouldn't think so.
acespot
August 25, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Maybe it's because I'm an OTR phile, but I immediately pegged it as having to be Sergeant Preston.
Then you go to one of the online databases and find the title.
Still, your guess is as good as mine regarding the artists. Any chance of contacting Dell directly?
Jake Oster
August 26, 2007 at 6:47 am
Italian artist Alberto Gioilitti appears to have drawn all the Sergeant Preston of the Yukon !!!
If your page is from Dell's Sgt. Preston it's by Gioilitti.
steven rowe
August 26, 2007 at 8:10 am
hmm, I was going to say that the art looks like either Giolitti or his studio - but I see jake beat me to it. Giolitti is best known for his work on Star Trek and Turok son of Stone.
Greg Hatcher
August 26, 2007 at 9:36 am
Huh. You know, Giolitti fits better than any guess so far. It does LOOK like his stuff, especially the slightly elongated faces. I just had it lodged in my head that his heyday was in the 60's, running his studio in Italy, and didn't really have him in the running for this. But Lambiek lists him as having worked on Sergeant Preston while he was still here in the States churning out all those other books for Dell.
That would be very cool if this page was his; I'm a fan. Wrote about him a little here.
And yeah, getting to Sergeant Preston isn't that hard if you're an aficionado of old-time radio or classic television... the process of elimination went a lot quicker in my head than it did writing it out. But I did want to walk everyone through the thought process when I wrote it up. Saves arguing later.
Greg Hatcher
August 26, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Looking around some more, this web page entry pretty well sews it up for me. It's Giolitti, all right.
FunkyGreenJerusalem
August 26, 2007 at 10:26 pm
It reminded me of some Charley's War strips I've seen.
(It's nothing to do with Charley's War, great WW1 series, but just reminded me of it).
suedenim
August 27, 2007 at 9:31 am
My aunt was a big fan of Sergeant Preston's radio show as a kid, which apparently always had pretty much the same ending. If you're confident that it's Giolitti, then you can re-enact the ending with a friendly canine acquaintance:
Sgt. Preston: Well, King, this case is closed!
King: Arf!
Dan (other Dan)
August 27, 2007 at 9:56 am
The link from post 16 pretty much seals it. I initially thought it was from a later date--I was struck by the last panel, in which the mountie informs Filer that his statements are admissable. This is rare enough in real life, and I imagine rarer in comics. I thought this might have been included due to the publicity surrounding the Miranda case; Miranda v. Arizona wasn't decided until 1966. It seemed reasonable that a mountie comic would be come from a small publisher that may have used the older print lettering style to cut costs. It seemed logical, but it doesn't fit well enough with the evidence to be accepted. Hooray scientific method!
Rob Allen
August 27, 2007 at 11:39 am
I was going to post Giolitti's name but I see it's been done. According to the Who's Who, Giolitti drew most of the Sgt. Preston stories and Gaylord Du Bois wrote them. Till Goodan is listed as doing some of the artwork in 1953 only.
So it looks like you have a Du Bois-Giolitti page there! A great find, congratulations!
What it's doing framed in a Goodwill store in Seattle is still a good question. I wonder if it's coincidence that Seattle is the large American city closest to the Yukon.
Wolfgang J. Fuchs
November 15, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Well, it's nice to see that some people out there still recognize a Giolitti page when they see one. It may interest you to know that Giolitti also did the "Tonto" comic book and some issues of the Dell "Indian Chief" books. His style is easily recognizable enough and the soundwords with the shadowing (like the YEOW on the page you got) are one of his trademarks.
I've met him once in Munich. He was a really nice guy. At the time his studio did the Star Trek comic and - believe it or not, they only had two photos of the Enterprise as model for the drawings at first. That's why, in the early issues of Star Trek, you get to see few drawings of the Enterprise. I promised Alberto to buy two Revell model kits of the Enterprise (which I knew I could get in Munich) and sent them to his studio in Rome. After that, suddenly, there were all kinds of views of the Enerprise to bee seen in the books. That was my modest contribution to the creative effort that went into the star Trek comic books.
Mark Zydanowicz
July 6, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Several years ago I found three small Sgt. Preston color comic books (approx. 5" x 3") with a copyright date of 1956. Does anyone know where they came from?
Greg Hatcher
July 6, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I don't KNOW. But I have a guess. It sounds like some sort of promotional piece at that size, probably enclosed with something else. Sort of like the miniature reprint comics that used to be enclosed with the DC and Marvel action figures sometimes. Chances are you'd have better luck checking out Sgt. Preston toys and merchandise than Sgt. Preston comics for an answer.
Chances are also good that they were miniature reprints of the actual comics. Beyond that, without seeing them, I got nothin'.
Allen
August 10, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Hello,
I also like Till Goodan. I hope I`m not out of line but I have a Tillman Goodan signed art piece early to mid 30`s, chalk and colored pencil,, bronc rider, for sale in excellent condition. If interested please mail me at milsurpenterprises@roadrunner.com