From out of the old file cabinet:
An eight week run of the 1958 Superman syndicated newspaper strip, distributed by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, featuring a Bizarro story line. I rescued these from the trash when Julie Schwartz was clearing out his DC Comics office in the 1990s. These are fairly old 8.5″ x 11″ photostatic copies of the proof sheets that the syndicate sent to newspapers to print the strips from; I’m guessing by the fuzziness of some of the smaller print on these stats that the images were enlarged from their original sizes. The fact that the syndicate information, printed along the bottom, was cut off during the copying-photographing of the proof sheets (although it survived on one sheet) would seem to support that.
The daily strips are numbered sequentially, beginning with #6189 on the first strip from October 13, 1958, and I love that each daily is given its own title. The strip was being written by DC Comics regular Alvin Schwartz, the art handled by Superman veterans Curt Swan and Stan Kaye. During this period, the daily and Sunday strips ran different continuities.
Tags: Alvin Schwartz, Bizarro, comic strips, Curt Swan, DC Comics, Lois Lane, newspaper strip, Stan Kaye. McClure Newspaper Syndicate, Superman
Did Julie Schwartz have a hand in creation of the DC newspaper strips? Were there a lot of such proof sheets that he was dumping then? Or was there a reason he had a copy of this specific sequence? Perhaps to refer to during development of a later Bizarro story when he edited Superman comic books?
Julie didn’t work on the 1950s newspaper strip, although he did edit the later Superman strip in the 1970s and 80s that Marty Pasko, Paul Levitz, and I would write. These were the only Superman strip proofs I saw, but I wasn’t there the whole time he was dumping file drawers. Most of the time when I asked him why he had saved something or other, he’d answer “Who the hell remembers?” But I did salvage a few interesting things, including a 1980s script for an unpublished graphic novel by one of the founding creators of the comic book business.
Don’t leave me in suspense… who was the ‘founding creator’?
Heh heh heh!
Did Curt Swan ever do any of the Superman SUNDAY strips??
Not during the 1980s run of the strip, but Curt draw the Superman newspaper strip for a while in the late-1950s.
Thanks — I know he did the black-and-white Daily strip for several years (’56 – ’60). I was wondering specifically if he did any of the full-color Sunday pages. After investigating several sources, it appears he didn’t, but I haven’t been able to ‘nail it down’ for certain yet and I was hoping somebody here would have the definitive answer! 🙂