Rip Kirby Volume 1
Having relinquished the Flash Gordon strip to fight in World War II, Raymond returned to create something completely different, a new strip featuring scientist-turned-private-detective Rip Kirby, an ex-marine, a former athlete, and a genuine intellectual, a bookish-looking urbanite who smoked a pipe and even wore glasses. This postwar paragon solved cases with the help of his valet (and former safecracker), Desmond, and his fashion-model girlfriend, Honey Dorian. The cultured and cerebral Rip may not be as well known as Flash, but his strip was technically far better work than Raymond’s gorgeously drawn but stiff and stilted sf epic. And Rip Kirby’s influence on the medium was as profound as that of its predecessor: while the elegant, heroic visual style Raymond developed for Flash was widely emulated by the 1940s generation of comic-book superhero artists, the art for Kirby—as sophisticated as its hero, stylish as Honey’s apparel, and notable for its solid compositions, well-placed areas of solid black, and bold line work—set the template for the dramatic newspaper strips of the 1950s and beyond. --Gordon Flagg