"Rip Kirby" by Alex Raymond

Here is a "Rip Kirby" daily strip by Alex Raymond from the story "The Laughs on Giggles," featuring Giggles Magee.

This strip was published on September 27th, 1955—fun coincidence, just two days after I was born.

"Rip Kirby" is an American comic strip created by Alex Raymond and Ward Greene featuring the adventures of private detective "Rip Kirby". The strip ran from 1946 to 1999 and was in the hands of artist John Prentice for more than 40 years. During Raymond's years on the strip, the stories were initially written by Ward Greene, and later, following Greene's death, by Fred Dickenson. Some sequences were also written by Raymond. In 1956, Raymond was killed in a car crash. King Features quickly needed a replacement, and found it in John Prentice.

Here’s a link to see my other "Rip Kirby" daily strip by Alex Raymond. And here, here, and here, you can see "Rip Kirby" by John Prentice.

 

 

Rip Kirby's hairy arms

In the late 60s I was living in Zagrab, Croatia/Yugoslavia at that time and despite being a communist country they published a lot of comics. Especially in newspapers, one of them was Rip Kirby but at that time already drawn by John Prentice. I discovered much later that it was original drawn by Alex Raymond. 

 There were two things that made comics very fascinating for me that had nothing to do with art even though earlier versions of drawings by John Prentice were very skillful. One was he had a butler, in communist countries and probably even outside of them, it was unheard of. Bruce Wayne was at least living in a castle, it’s a huge place you need a butler to help you out. But Rip Kirby was living in an apartment in New York, why would he need a butler? Other P.I.’s had female companions/secretaries/assistants… Rip Kirby has a butler? 

Another fascinating thing for me was that he had hairy arms. I never saw anyone drawing a comic hero with hairy arms. That was partly appealing to me because I was coming from a country of hairy male.

Here are links to more, and more, and more Rip Kirby comics from my collection.

 

"Rip Kirby" by Alex Raymond

I acquired this Alex Raymond, Rip Kirby comic strip from 1953 not only because it is Alex Raymond's, but also because it's an unusual piece for Alex Raymond's. The third frame of the comic is typical Raymond. But the second, especially the first frame, is very atypical. Big, static, symmetric, contrasty and with minimal details. 
 

My cup of tea.

 

Alex Raymond, Jim Holdaway and... Mirko Ilic

Seeing this cover of this Italian Il Mago comics magazine from 1979, makes me smile.

Not very often, as a matter of fact never before, the face of my comic “ hero”  appeared between faces of Rip Kirby by Alex Raymond and Modesty Blaise  by Jim Holdaway.