OT : Tales from the New York Daily News Sunday Comics (#4) : Jack Kirby is Where You Find it!

Begun as a blog to unload (or upload) all the information I'd accumulated in my decades of research into Martin Goodman and all his published product ... comic books, pulps, magazines and digests, I've often veered here into my other obsession, the history of the New York Sunday News comics. At the age of 56, I'm still knee-deep in both worlds of research, even moderating two Facebook groups devoted to each topic. This post will happily merge the two, in a way of sorts. Comic Books and Sunday Comics. You'll see what I mean below as there's always a method to my madness.

The mechanism of the merger is the name well known to all of us as the single most important name in the history of commercial comic books, Jack Kirby. Yes, I know there are many seminal names of importance... there are publishers, there are artists and writers, innovators, etc... .the list is long:  Just a handful would include Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Will Eisner, Carl Barks, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, Sheldon Mayer, Max Gaines, Bill Gaines, Stan Lee, Joe Simon,Wally Wood, EC, DC, Marvel, etc, et al.... we can go on for quite a while and I don't want anyone feeling I left out their favorite candidates. Each of those creators, companies and more have done something crucially important in comics history and they are all vital. I can't name them all here. My candidate is Jack Kirby. Commercial action/adventure/hero comic books begin and end with Jack Kirby. If I have to explain it, move on to another blog. I covered  Jack Kirby's entire history at Timely Comics HERE on the occasion of his 100th birthday. This Timely/Kirby history is important as I unravel my story today.

So what does Jack Kirby have to do with the New York Sunday comics? I'm getting to it. For years I've been building a near 100 year database on the NY Sunday News comics, a newspaper that was founded by publisher Joseph Medill Patterson in 1919. The index is probably 65% to 70% complete over the course of a century. You want to know when a particular strip began or stopped, I can probably tell you, or at the very least narrow it down closely to the month, often the exact week. My favorite aspects are not the well-known standards of the comic pages, but instead the short-run strips and the strange and elusive fillers! (That's a blog post in the making). Strips that appeared and vanished into the ether, never to be seen again or reprinted. The News was full of them as they had their own New York News Syndicate that produced strips "only" for this one paper. That means if you didn't read the NY Sunday News, you never saw those comic strips.  That's the full type of data I'm archiving and scanning. It's a lot of fun, it takes a lot of time and it also takes a lot of paper! My data is not mined from online sources, nor books, nor hearsay. It comes from my own observation of the actual Sunday newspaper comic sections I have in my own possession. And for this I have two sources. The first is my near-complete collection of Sunday sections I've saved from about 1968 to present. The second is from newspaper dealers all over the country (actually, the world, as I've bought NY News Sunday comics sections from as far away as South Korea!) that have taken my collection back to 1924 (as of this writing).

So yeah, I spend all my free time immersed in newsprint, either the 10 cent four-color stapled variety, or the tabloid-sized folded variety. 

My focus has always been on complete Sunday sections. I need to know what's inside and their order. And also the ads (another blog post for the future). I really cringe at strip dealers that have cut up collections to put runs together of favorite strips. It's been going on for decades and I realize it has its place for strip collectors. I have bought strip collections this way in the past on certain strips. But the idea of cutting up a complete vintage Sunday section is and will always will be abhorrent to me. 

Recently I acquired a large collection of "incomplete" Sunday sections. Historically, I avoid these because they don't suit my needs of collecting data from complete sections. But this time I gave in. The collection was a large collection of 1940's and 1950's "incompletes." Going through the pile I was happy to see that there were actually 2 complete sections, unbeknownst to the seller. Additionally, there was a section missing a centerfold and incredibly, I had a loose centerfold for that same week bought the year before that matched up perfectly! I kid you not. There's an outside chance the seller was the same and this is the actual missing centerfold from that exact Sunday section, somehow separated long ago and sold years apart to the same buyer, namely me. And lastly, there were tons of  miscellaneous half-sections, 4-side outer wraps and 4 side interior pages.

One such half-section was from 1957. The original section was 16 pages long. This was the first 2 wraps, a total of 8 pages. Now I'm not a fan of the later 1950's NY Sunday News comics. Except for the last 20 years, it's my least favorite period. Long-running features from the 1930's were winding down in quality. There was the occasional uninspired feature added but the stable was the same. The 1960's, particularly after the newspaper strike of 1962-63, injected new life into the NY Sunday News as orphaned strips from the NY Sunday Mirror made their way over, including Li'l Abner, Louie, Kerry Drake and Rex Morgan M.D. (In addition, short runs from The Mirror included Joe Palooka, Mickey Finn, Henry, Apartment 3-G and Dan Flagg. But that's a blog post for another time.) Likewise, by 1967, strips from the defunct Journal-American would join the paper, titans of the Sunday comics including Chic Young's Blondie and Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey.

So 1957 was somewhat predictable, Sunday comics-wise, in the NY Sunday News. A typical Sunday section would start off with Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie, George Wunder's Terry and the Pirates and then either Dale Messick's Brenda Starr Reporter or Ferd Johnson's Moon Mullins. The back page was always Bill Perry's Gasoline Alley and inside you'd find a full-tab Dondi by Gus Edson and Irwin Hasen. (Dondi didn't get the back cover until after the newspaper strike in 1963).

The rest were old News icons like Walter Berndt's Smitty, Martin Branner's Winnie Winkle, William Donahey's The Teenie Weenies, Stanley Link's Tiny Tim (which ended with Link's death on Christmas eve), Bill Holman's Smokey Stover, Al Posen's Sweeney & Son, Jay Irving's Pottsy, Timmy by Howard Sparber and Smilin'Jack by Zack Mosley. Fillers, depending on the ad space being sold, could be a compilation of Reamer Keller spot gags, Gill Fox's Bumper to Bumper, or one of several fillers by Henri Arnold, This Man's Army or Bibs 'N' Tucker.

And, of course, there were the Westerns. In the 1950's, there always were Westerns! A staple of early television and film, Westerns were rampant across entertainment media. The early 1950's saw the best one, Hopalong Cassidy debut by Dan Spiegle. This was one beautiful Sunday strip that resonated with all the colors of the West. I don't know if it ever was reprinted but I'm going to highlight it here in the future. Late 1957 saw the launch of Jed Cooper, American Scout by Rick Fletcher in this paper (It began in 1949 elsewhere, running until 1961). 

And in between the two, there was Davy Crockett, Frontiersman by Jim McArdle and then Jim Christiansen, syndicated by Columbia Features, Inc.. Writing on this strip was France Edward Herron. 

Interlude:

Eddie Herron broke into the comics business at the Harry A. Chesler shop in 1937, producing work for Centaur Comics. In 1939 he was at Fox where he ran into Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who later hired him to work on the earliest issues of Captain America Comics for Timely by way of the informal Simon & Kirby "shop" that packaged the first 10 issues of the title. It was at Timely where Eddie Herron became known, according to Jack Kirby, as the "father of the Red Skull", creating the character for the first issue of the book.  Herron would then move over to Fawcett Comics and co-create Captain Marvel Jr. with Mac Raboy. 

After the War, Herron began a long writing tenure with DC comics up through the early 1960's. He was there when Jack Kirby launched Challengers of the Unknown, later even writing the feature, and later joined his old colleague Joe Simon at Harvey in 1966, the year of his death.

In 1955, Herron began writing the Davy Crocket, Frontiersman newspaper strip. Crockett mania had exploded across the country after the success of Walt Disney's 1954-55 TV show (a total of only 5 episodes). The first artist on the strip was Jim McArdle and his work was servicable, if pedestrian. A Funnies Inc. alumnus of the early 1940s, McArdle made his way around the industry in the 1940's and 1950's doing a lot of work at DC in the 1950's, titles including Gang Busters, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Star Spangled Comics.and Our Army at War. By 1957 the mania was stalling and on Sunday February 24, 1957 a ghost artist substituted for McArdle. 

End of Interlude

As I made my way through the pile of "incomplete" Sunday sections, as I mentioned, I landed on a half  section from early 1957. Only the two outer wraps were extant. Paging through I felt it would be a good idea to scan the entire section for my files. Who knew how long it would take to eventually find an intact section. Historically, I scanned only my favorite strips but over the last few years, I've come to understand that I should have been scanning "every" strip for posterity. One strip I did not scan was Davy Crockett, Frontiersman. In fact, I didn't have a single representative of this strip in my digital files (although I had over 30 paper original Sunday strips in complete Sunday sections). The strip only ran about two years and I believe ended this very year. I just didn't like westerns in general, or this strip in particular. The art was uninspired and the only thing to ever catch my eye was the Timely-tinged name Eddie Herron in the first panel, a name I knew, as mentioned, had created the Red Skull for Simon & Kirby.

I begin scanning.... First Dick Tracy and then Little Orphan Annie on the reverse. I then jump to the back page and scanned Gasoline Alley followed by full tab page Terry and the Pirates, and Moon Mullins. Back to half tabs Pottsy, Smitty, Teenie Weenies, Tiny Tim and Smokey Stover. And that was it. Missing from the two lost interior wraps were Winnie Winkle, Smilin' Jack, Sweeney & Son, Brenda Starr Reporter, Timmy and Dondi.

Oh, also there was Davy Crocket, Frontiersman, but already seen, I never scan this feature. Then briefly glancing at the strip, I thought maybe I'd scan it this one time and have at least one Sunday section for my files. So without too much thought, I place it down on the scanner bed  and scan the strip. Usually I don't pay too much attention to an image as it slowly appears across my computer screen during a scanning, but the slow creep at 300 dpi caught my attention. As the image loaded the art really jumped out at me and I was struck at how bold it was. It was real good, better than I'd ever noticed before on this feature. The characters stood nobly at attention and struck very "familiar" poses, as something strangely gnawed at the back of my head. Wait a minute, it couldn't be.... I grabbed the Sunday section off the scanner bed and look at it closely. THIS WAS JACK KIRBY!!!

Jack Kirby???  Was this possible? Did I ever hear about this before? I wracked my brain, recalling that he had ghosted Johnny Reb for Frank Giacoia for a few strips. This was about the same time as that, so it certainly was possible. Of course it was possible! My eyes don't lie!. A search online turned up a reference to this in a post on the Jack Kirby Museum site HERE. The author relates a search after Kirby Davy Crockett French reprints surfaced, and comparison to Kirby's Davy Crockett work for Harvey Comics, and that he ghosted the newspaper strip for 3 weeks, with the further comment that it was unknown or even doubtful that Kirby had done the Sunday strip in that time.

Well, I can answer that question... He did! February 24, 1957 in the NY Sunday News comics......

My feeling here is that he likely inked this himself and truthfully, I don't know if he did the following week also.I don't have the following week's Sunday section.


*** (6/21/18 addendum ... Jack Kirby "DID" draw the following week also, March 3, 1957!!!!!!)

The circumstances that lead up to this "ghosting" of the strip are speculation but Kirby's long-time relationship with Eddie Herron probably had a lot to do with it. Losing work after Martin Goodman lost his distributor in the Spring of 1957 certainly led to seeking other avenues of income. Kirby lost both the Yellow Claw feature and a newly launched Black Rider comic book. Scrambling for work, Kirby and Herron hooked up in some capacity leading to a tenure of about 3 weeks on the Davy Crockett strip, including at the very least, this Sunday page. Later, of course, Jack Kirby would launch his own Sky Masters newspaper strip in 1958 with Dave Wood, lasting through 1961.

Following this short sojourn by Jack Kirby, the art chores were taken over by Jim Christiansen, who I felt better suited to the feature than McArdle. Trained in the Tom Gill studio on The Lone Ranger comic book for Dell, Christiansen also drew the Nero Wolfe comic strip for the same Columbia Features, Inc. syndicate. The Tom Gill influence is very evident on his pages, so much so it makes me wonder if Gill's hand is here in some capacity.

The New York Sunday News ran their last Davy Crocket, Frontiersman Sunday on August 25, 1957. The strip was replaced the following week by Leonard Starr's masterpiece, On Stage. It's alleged that Davy Crockett lasted elsewhere as late as 1959 but I do not have corroboration on this. If anyone has further data on that, I'd be extremely appreciative if you could please pass that information on to me

Here is the rest of the aborted, truncated, half-section off the pile of "incompletes". At the very end afterwards I will also present my collection of Davy Crockett Sundays by McArdle and Christiansen (and Jack Kirby). The collection is not complete but consists of the 56 Sundays I've been able to acquire.


New York Sunday News Comics of February 24, 1957 (truncated half-section) :
*** (6/12/18 addendum, the 5 missing strips of the truncated section have been added below)

• Dick Tracy by Chester Gould

• Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray

• Terry and the Pirates by George Wunder

• Moon Mullins by Ferd Johnson (Frank Willard's signature is printed but the strip is all Ferd Johnson, who finally gets the by-line in 1958)

• Brenda Starr Reporter by Dale Messick

• Dondi by Gus Edson and Irwin Hasen

• Sweeney & Son by Al Posen

• Smokey Stover by Bill Holman

• Smilin' Jack by Zack Mosley

• Winnie Winkle signed by Martin Branner

• Pottsy by Jay Irving (A NY News Syndicate strip, this may have "only" run in the NY Sunday News)

• Smitty by Walter Berndt

• The Teenie Weenies by William Donahey

• Tiny Tim by Stanley Link

• Gasoline Alley by Bill Perry

And finally, my 56 Sunday collection of DAVY CROCKETT, FRONTIERSMAN, stretching from November 6, 1955 to the final Sunday carried by the NY Sunday News, August 25, 1957. The very next week it was replaced by Leonard Starr's ON STAGE.

 November 6, 1955

 November 13, 1955

November 20, 1955

January 1, 1956

January 8, 1956

January 15, 1956

January 22, 1956

 January 29, 1956

February 5, 1956

February 12, 1956

February 19, 1956

February 26, 1956

March 4, 1956

April 1, 1956

April 15, 1956

May 13, 1956

May 27, 1956

June 3, 1956

June 10, 1956

June 17, 1956

June 24, 1956

July 15, 1956

July 22, 1956

September 16, 1956

September 23, 1956

September 30, 1956

October 7, 1956

October 14, 1956

November 18, 1956

November 25, 1956

December 2, 1956

December 9, 1956

January 20, 1957

January 27, 1957

February 3, 1957

February 10, 1957

February 17, 1957

February 24, 1957 - Art by Jack Kirby (pencils/inks) !!!!!

March 3, 1957 - Art by Jack Kirby (pencils/inks) !!!!!

March 10, 1957

March 17, 1957

March 24, 1957

March 31, 1957

April 7, 1957

April 14, 1957

April 21, 1957

May 5, 1957

May 19, 1957

June 2, 1957

June 9, 1957

June 16, 1957

June 30, 1957

July 7, 1957

July 28, 1957

August 18, 1957

August 25, 1957

"We Wish You a Maneely Christmas and a Happy New Year!"

On the occasion of this blog's 50th post anniversary (over the course of exactly 7 years, nearly to the day), I want to show an obscure little item that is near and dear to my heart.

As many know, I've been working on an art biography of Timely/Atlas/Marvel artist Joe Maneely for years now. Work has been put off several times as project after project (with deadlines) got placed in the way. First, my book with Blake Bell, "The Secret History of Marvel Comics", published by Fantagraphics completely sidetracked my work on Maneely's book. Then work on several books for Taschen Publishing, "75 Years of Marvel" and their upcoming book on Stan Lee (as well as this blog!) further took me away from the project. And of course, just "life" also tends to get involved. As a way of putting things in order and to honor the spirit of the season, I present a very short post (at least by my standards).  

By the end of 1947, Joe Maneely left the Hussian School of Art in Philadelphia and procured work from a small art service called Penn Art, an outfit that helped funnel comic story art to Street & Smith's comic book division (more backgound to be found in the book). Penn Art was run by long-time Street & Smith editor and promotions manager, William J. de Grouchy.

One of the most popular titles in the Street & Smith comic book stable was Red Dragon Comics, and in issue #7, cover dated May/49, but on the stands in time for the 1948 Christmas season, was this delightful little 10 page story written by Bruce Elliot (turning the script in on September 9, 1948 and getting paid $100 for his trouble) and illustrated by the young 22 year old neophyte to the industry, Joe Maneely. And it shows just how good Joe was at the very onset, sucking up influences from contemporaries as diverse as Bob Powell and Edd Cartier. Within a year's time Street & Smith would shut down their comic book division and Joe, after dallying elsewhere, would end up at Stan Lee's door, where he would make a very big mark for the next ten years.

So with a small taste of a book to come, from exactly 69 years ago, I give you "Mario Nette" and wish all readers a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year!

Charles H. King (1934-2017)

You meet a lot of people as you go through life, people who leave varying degrees of impressions. Every once in a while, the impression left is like a Jurassic leaf fallen on glistening wet mud, buried immediately, and eons hence reveals fossilized details that can be scrutinized, and hidden wonders divulged.

I'm positively certain no one reading this has ever heard of Charles H. King. Mr. King was a patient of mine in my office, referred to me eight years ago by his physician, also a patient of mine. An affable man with a natural story-telling personality, Charles quickly became one of my favorite patients as his mile-a-minute manner of speaking regaled me with quips and jokes. I always looked forward to seeing him. 

In 2013, during one of his marathon explanations about something or other we were discussing, he dropped the name Benarr Macfadden, pausing to mention that he doubted I knew who he was talking about. In fact, I knew exactly who he was talking about, having spent the past two years buried in ancient Writer's Digests researching our book, The Secret History of Marvel Comics. I replied, "The Physical Culture publisher?" He responded, "That's the guy! I'm surprised you've heard of him!" I then explained that I was familiar with nearly all the names of the publishing world of a near century past, and that I was then in the process of writing a book on the early history of Marvel Comics' publisher, Martin Goodman. 

"Oh, I loved the comics!", Mr. King exclaimed. "I was a Captain Marvel fanatic when I was a kid. The Big Red Cheese! And I loved the science fiction comics in the 1950's."  Now we had a common meeting ground and were kindred souls. We proceeded to talk about the comic books of the 1940's and 1950's, pulps, animated cartoons, and generally had a grand old time doing so. This went on for several years and then I didn't see Mr. King for a while. When he returned, he came with an aide, having had a debilitating stroke that affected his right side. But he overcame the limitations of this disability, taking the affliction in stride, and was his usual garrulous, smiling self.  

On this particular day I noticed that he had found my office copy of our book and was poring through it intently, waving it at me from the waiting room, remarking, "This is your book? It finally got printed! Congratulations!" We then sat down and looked through it together. He had never seen Goodman's science fiction pulps in their first run but recalled the early 1950's digest version quite clearly, the ones edited by Daniel Keyes. The rest was all new to him as his only real interest was in science fiction and Goodman did not publish much of that at all, preferring to flood the newsstands with primarily westerns and crime pulps, as we all know.

He was in the middle of explaining something pulp-related and said in passing, "... Like I told Isaac Asimov one time, ..." I immediately stopped him in mid-sentence, asking incredulously,"What do you mean, as you told Isaac Asimov one time? You knew Isaac Asimov?" He replied, "Oh yeah, we were members of the same science fiction clubs for years. We were members of The Trap Door Spiders." My mouth dropped open, "You were a member of The Trap Door Spiders?", I blurted out! "Oh yes," came the reply, "And I wrote for those science fiction pulps also." 

(*** A look at the Wikipedia listing for The Trap Door Spiders does includes Charles King's name along with icons of science fiction including Isaac Asimov, Lin Carter, L. Sprague deCamp, Lester del Rey and Theodore Sturgeon***)

Now I was stunned. Like falling dominoes, one of my favorite patients, in a quick series of revelations, had turned out to be not only a kindred comic book spirit, but an actual creative contributor to those very same moulding pulp magazines I spent years buried in research. 

"What did you write?", I had to know. "Just some short stories," was the reply. "Under your own name?" "No, under the name H. Charles Blair." I think he said Blair was his mother's maiden name.

Well it didn't take long to run that name through the myriad online science-fiction author's databases, coming up with a single hit, Future Science Fiction Vol 3, #1 (May/52), published by Louis Silberkleit's Columbia Publications, and edited by Robert Lowndes. Scouring Ebay, I located two copies and bought them. When they arrived, there on page 75 was his story, "The Rememberers," a short 7 page treatise on the loneliness of interstellar space travel. The byline was H. Charles Blair. And Mr. King was in good literary standing as both L. Sprague deCamp and Lester del Rey accompanied him in this issue with stories, fellow Trap Door Spider associates!

The next time he came into my office, I was ready. I presented Mr. King with a long lost copy of Future Science Fiction. I say long lost because he said he no longer had a copy of the pulp, and had not seen it for 50 years!

That day I gave Mr. King a copy of his pulp story he once again said something that stopped me in my tracks. He was holding and paging through a copy of my and Blake's book looking at the section on the men's adventure magazines, and completely out of the blue blurts out, "You know, I was hired by Bruce J. Friedman to work for Magazine Management." Just like that! Out of nowhere, he mentions Bruce J. Friedman and Magazine Management, which just happens to be the entirety of Martin Goodman's non-comic book publishing empire and the main subject of our book!

I practically screeched, "Wait!!" "What did you do?? When?? How...??" He cut me off, answering, "Oh, I was hired but I never worked for them. My wife wanted me to get a real job so I immediately landed a job with (an agency I don't recall) and quit before my first day!" "How did you end up at Magazine Management?", I asked. The answer was, he had written stories for a ton of men's magazines at the time and felt a staff position with one of the biggest publishers might be good idea. Asked what he wrote for the men's magazines, the answer was, "fiction," but didn't provide any details.

Going back to online fiction magazine author databases, I turned up 3 stories under the byline Charles H. King. All were in Playboy-type knock-off magazines of the early 1960's. It looks like Mr. King would have been a natural fit right in with Bruce J. Friedman and Mario Puzo at the Magazine Management of the 1960's......

The first story, "Room at the Bottom", is a piece of satire in the Vol 5, #5, June 1961 issue of THE GENT.

The second story, "Road Runner", is in the Vol 6, #11, November, 1961 issue of ROGUE. Included is a photo of Charles H. King in the "Rogue Notes" column. (The image I've used at the top of this article). The issue also contains a story by Robert Bloch

The end of the story is cropped from the top of the page it appears. The full page 80 is included also.

The third story I found, "This is Your Wife!", is satire from the Vol 7, #2, November 1962 issue of DUDE.

These three are the only ones I was able to turn up and the likely scenario is that there may be a score of additional short fiction stories buried in back-issue early 1960's men's magazines.

But this is not the end of Mr. Charles King's literary career. There's one more very important item, the existence of which he'd been mentioning for a while and I just didn't catch on. Let me explain what I mean. From the first time I met Mr. King, I've related about how enthusiastically garrulous he was. He would speak fast and in spurts, mentioning so many things in a row that it was often a bit hard to keep up. And of course out of courtesy, I would not stop him over and over to explain a point or a reference more clearly. One thing I realized (well after the fact) was that he often made a reference using the phrase "mama's boy." I didn't really know what he meant, he didn't offer any context, just kept on with whatever he was talking about. He mentioned it often enough for me to wonder if perhaps he had a tendency to use the expression colloquially for whatever reason he had. While I was researching his early fiction I was startled to find that Mr. Charles King had actually written a novel by that name, "Mama's Boy!" Now it all made sense! He was repeatedly referring to his novel, without actually having ever told me that he had written a novel!

And what a novel it was! Published by Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books in 1992, this crime-suspense thriller got rave reviews including a back cover acclaim by noted horror author Peter Straub. But what really was interesting was the bio on the dust jacket, a bio that gave background on Mr. King's life that I knew nothing about, and Mr. King being one not  to talk about himself (Mama's Boy excepted, which he was obviously proud of).

From the dust jacket flap (including another updated photo):

"Charles King has been a mathematician at the Harvard Computation Laboratory, a performer and writer for network radio, and a creative director at a large New York advertising agency. (He was the ad man "John Fortune" in Studs Terkel's Working.) He has published some twenty short stories in national magazines; this is his first novel. He lives with his wife Katherine in New York."

Who knew? I certainly didn't. I packed all these men's magazines up with a copy of Mama's Boy, and brought them all in for him to see the next time his appointment came around. He laughed at the men's magazines, recalling that they paid poorly and were the impetus for his wife's urging to get a "real" job, a job that landed him ultimately at the top of the Advertising business. A real-life Mad Man at the exact same time!

In the last 2 years or so, his wife's health took a turn for the worse and Mr. King's own health was a battle. I last saw him in June, and he was his usual outgoing, happy self, refusing to let obstacles stop him from enjoying life.

In early September, several weeks ago, I received a phone call from Mr. King's brother. Mr. King had been in a car accident, and was pretty darn banged up. I offered my good wishes be passed along and my help in any way I could offer. He was in need of a particular medical referral, which I eagerly gave. The feeling I had from that phone call was that although he was an elderly man, and battling his own medical concerns, he was going to be ok. Within a week we received the sad news that Mr. King had passed away on September 15th.

And just like that, he was gone, causing me to think about what a wonderful life he had and how much he'd seen and done that intersected with my own interests and passions. It made me realize that I should have interviewed him formally and gotten his entire story for posterity. I really knew nothing at all about his Advertising career, nor his personal life. But then again I also realize that it was only by the chance mentioning of a now obscure physical culture publisher of the 1920's, that I even uncovered our allied interests. In any manner, I will miss Mr. Charles H. King and welcome anyone who reads this who may have known him in a professional (or non-professional) manner to add to his story.