Well, if you'll indulge me, it all started with Leonard Starr.
Again -- who?!
Folks -- we're about to do some deep digging, which hopefully someone out there will find at least a teensy bit interesting and/or informational.
When I was a kid, one of the many properties hurled at us children of the eighties was THUNDERCATS. I watched the cartoon, I owned some of the toys. Eventually it went off the air and I more or less forgot about it. Then, a decade or so later in 1997 -- when I was in high school -- Cartoon Network began to air the original show as part of their weekday afternoon Toonami programming block. I started watching again, and this time I was able to see every single episode, as opposed to my childhood viewings of only some here and there.
I also paid attention to the credits during those Toonami airings, and saw that nearly all the major episodes, continuity-wise, were written by a fellow named Leonard Starr, who also appeared on the end credits of every episode as the Head Writer. At the time I didn't really think much of it other than that he was a pretty creative guy, and that was that.
Still more years later, probably somewhere around 2011 or so, I found myself reading a bunch of old Batman comics from the seventies. I was more than a little surprised when I read some issue or another of DETECTIVE COMICS and found a story drawn by Leonard Starr. "The THUNDERCATS writer?!" I thought, thoroughly confused.
At that point I did a little Googling and learned there was far more to Leonard Starr's long career than his work on THUNDERCATS -- in fact, that series was practically a footnote! Starr was known primarily as a cartoonist who worked in both comic books and comic strips. His claim to fame was as the creator and writer/artist of a strip called MARY PERKINS ON STAGE for its full run from 1957 to 1979, after which he became the artist on LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE.
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| Leonard and Mary as illustrated by Starr. |
So I filed away the trivia about Leonard Starr and went back to my daily business. Then, just a year or two ago, as I was really getting into the comic strip frenzy I've spoken about at length here, Starr's name came to mind and I decided I should try to find something he'd worked on. I wasn't that excited about MARY PERKINS -- the artwork looked beautiful, but soap opera strips aren't really my focus, at least at this time -- and I've never been much of a fan of ANNIE. But as I did a little research, I learned that a small publisher called Classic Comics Press had just released a volume called KELLY GREEN, which collected a group of graphic novels Starr had written in the eighties for an overseas publisher.
Though not a comic strip, KELLY GREEN sounded right up my alley. Written by Starr and drawn by another longtime syndicated cartoonist, Stan Drake, it was a black-and-white adventure/crime series about an attractive young lady getting into various deadly situations. Somehow I was familiar with Drake, though I wasn't sure I'd ever read any of his work (he was known primarily for his soap opera strip, THE HEART OF JULIET JONES, and later for BLONDIE in the eighties), and I knew I would like his art -- so I picked up KELLY GREEN last year and I've been holding onto it since.
Now, finally, I've decided to crack the volume open and give it a read. This is Starr writing in the same era as his THUNDERCATS work, though in a decidedly different genre and with more adult sensibilities. I'm really curious to check it out, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts on the five graphic novels, one Friday at a time, right here.
P.S.: Funnily enough, we'll see Leonard Starr the artist pop up on this blog too in the not-too-distant future, as it turns out he provided inks for one of John Byrne's ACTION COMICS issues in 1988!
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