Sunday, July 16, 2017

What's In A Name Change?

Thursday Story Strip Day.

For the last few months I have been showing longruns of John Spranger and Lawrence Lariar's Bodyguard Sunday strip. Here are the last three I have before the strip morphed into Ben Friday (same team, different name). In these you can clearly see that Spranger was Will Eisner's main penciller after the war. In the course of Ben Friday and The bantam Prince after that, he lost more and moreof it. Whe he took over The Saint, he completely dropped all Eisner influences and did it his own way for the rest of the decade.

Because I am leaving for San Diego (and beyond) for a two week trip soon, I am givign you the rest of Ben Friday one page at the time from Monday. Visit daily for a new page and use the time to vbrowse the rest of my ten yer backlog of the best of the forgotten decade.

2 comments:

Bill Griffith said...

Great Lariar stuff---I've seen most of it---have you seen my graphic memoir about my mother and her 16 year affair with Lariar? It won a 2016 Eisner Award---"Invisible Ink" is the title----I used lots of Lariar's art throughout---all re-drawn by me.
It featuref "The Bodyguard" and "Ben FRiday", among many others--the guy may not have been one of the greats---but he was prolific!
-Bill Griffith

Ger Apeldoorn said...

And of course he did all those Best of the Year cartoon books. A great contribution to the field. I am not a particular friend of his style, but he sure gave it his best. Otehrwise, see the other comment.