Ron Goulart returns to the site today with a remembrance of Fred Ray.
Although Fred Ray is best remembered for the two decades he devoted to drawing DC’s Tomahawk, he had already been in comics for several years before he took over the buckskin-clad hero and, in the early ‘40s, he did some of the best straight adventure stuff in the comic books of the time, as well of some memorable Golden Age covers.
Frederic E. Ray, who usually signed himself Fray, was born in Pennsylvania in 1922. He always had an interest in history as well as in comics, and his major influences growing up were illustrators Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth and Frederic Remington, as well as cartoonists Hal Foster and, most important, Noel Sickles. He was impressed, too, by a nonfiction newspaper strip called Highlights of History by an artist named J. Carroll Mansfield.
Elsewhere:
A Kickstarter campaign for the book Sullivan's Sluggers gets ugly and then gets uglier.
Thomas Nasts's traveling murals.
A tribute to Al Capp's various activities.
More on Jerry Ordway and thoughts on "ageism" in comics.
Cartoonist (conflict of interest alert) and author of Men's Group: The Video, Ben Jones, gets a preview here.
An essay on Tumblr and photography, some of which could be applied to comic book pages as well.
And finally, enjoy the weekend with the old National Lampoon and this great bit about John Lennon from its 1972 Radio Dinner LP.
