Kevin the BOLD

Back in the mid 60s, I had an afternoon paper route where a truck would drop off a couple of huge bundles of papers that I had to fold and put rubber bands around before loading them on my bike. I constantly had printer's ink on my hands and newsprint aroma in my nostrils, and I loved it! I saved not only comic strips, but the editorial cartoons (Paul Conrad at that time), and news photos that I would practice drawing from. On Sundays, I regularly clipped Prince Valiant, Steve Canyon, The Green Berets by Joe Kubert, Pogo, Peanuts, and a bunch of miscellaneous.

I delivered the afternoon paper, but mom also subscribed to the morning paper, so I clipped a lot from both. I had quite a collection of strips, but I wasn't at that time an archivist, so I clipped really close to the borders, sometimes dipping to the inside of borders. I am so ticked at myself that I didn't just save the entire comic sections from both papers and just leave it at that. I would have had a beautiful run of some beautiful strips.

In time, I would grow tired of keeping all those strips in order and was overwhelmed by the boxes and boxes I had accumulated of them. So I tossed them.

Well, I did keep some samplings of favorites (and even those have disappeared slowly over the years). I still have a good long run of Pogo, but everything else came down to a handful of samples.

Five Sundays of Kevin the Bold actually made the cut to survive to this day, and they are posted here. I've already posted one of these, but I found a few more and wanted to make a set, though far from a continuity.

I wish I had kept more.

In the interest of full disclosure, I've cleaned these scans up a little, to get rid of the worst of the bleed-through from the other side (Bugs Bunny—yuck), and I've accentuated skin blush. In the 30s and 40s skin blush was beautifully displayed throughout the comics, but by the 60s, colorists didn't want to be bothered much with subtleties and comic page people always looked washed out. Well, these days I don't have to put up with that crap!

And Leonardo put in some time in the strip. How cool was that!

Angelina is a fine looking lass, isn't she?

If anyone has good scans of Kevin the Bold, or other earlier strips (like the Alley Oop time travel Sundays) PLEASE drop me a line. Like anyone is even looking at this blog, or ever will.