Friday 20 April 2007

Alex Raymond's Rip Kirby Sundays!

When I was a kid I just assumed that every newspaper strip had it's own sunday page. So when I read John Prentices "Rip Kirby" in the morning paper (Oddly named "Peter Falk" here in the 70's!) I naturally thought that there was a sunday published somewhere out there. Just my bad luck that "Borås Tidning" didn't carry it...
But, of course, there never was any "Rip Kirby" sunday page.
Or was there?

When I was around ten a friend and I found a huge stack of old weekly magazines in an abandoned house. (FamiljeJournalen from around 1957.)
And to my surprise there they were: Alex Raymonds "Rip Kirby", full pages in color!!! If you don't believe me, see for yourself:




So there were actually "Rip Kirby" sundays! How could this be?
Well, I guess that you already have figured out what I as a ten year old kid didn't get. All those beautiful color pages (Wich I tore out from the magazines and saved like a national treasure...) were re-formatted dailies.
But still, these gives us a glimpse of what could have been.
Later the weekly "Allers" picked up Rip and published it in the format you see below. Still in the form of a "sunday". They continued with Prentices version in this format well into the 60's I believe.


Watch this blog later this weekend for Alex Raymond's mystery strip: "Red Race". Never heard about it? Don't worry. Very few have. But soon you'll be the envy of your friends and colleauges with the facts you'll find about it here.
Stay tuned, as they say.

2 comments:

Allan Holtz said...

And a pretty creditable job of coloring they did!

--Allan Holtz

Anonymous said...

Really nice pages. Raymond is truly the master. Each panel is a work of art by itself with the attention to detail and refined elegance. "Alex is the man" as Swedish 60's pop icons Ola & the Janglers stated. Thanks!