Monday, April 03, 2023

LEONARD STARR'S OLDER BROTHER



Cartoonist Leonard Starr idolized his older brother, who was killed fighting in World War II. When Starr grew up and began his comic strip On Stage, he modeled a character after his brother.

The character, Grisha Volkov, was a dashing Russian rogue (Starr's family roots were in Russia).  Starr made his character as tough and confident as Starr remembered his brother.  Volkov won every battle, even the one Starr's brother lost.  

When I was barely old enough to read On Stage I was thrilled by the beautifully drawn action scenes featuring Volkov.



I must've traced this image ten times while learning to draw.

I cut the cool drawings out of my parents' newspaper and kept them in a shoebox. Those strips and I have both aged considerably since then, yet I still find them cool.




With a more mature eye, I can see the different ways in which these strips sparkled.  Sure, fight scenes were cool but I learned it was more cool to merely imply the action, with Volkov emerging nonchalant at the end:

In this next scene Starr uses the same device of implied violence, as the Volkov character clears two spies outside his gate, then gets in his car and drives away.


One by one, I grew to appreciate the range of talents that combined to make On Stage: Starr's brushwork, his timing, those subtle facial expressions, his staging. By the time I got to high school I even loved Starr's intelligent dialogue, which I believe was unique in the history of comic strips. Look how he used language to bring his brother's personality back to life, chuckling occasionally at how his brother might react in certain situations : 











When I grew up and met Starr I found him to be possibly the most well read person I'd ever met.  He loved the great Russian authors, particularly Gogol and Pushkin, but he would also seamlessly quote the private letters of Raymond Chandler.   This range enabled him to combine rich characterizations of human nature with blunt, "tough guy" messages:





So... Starr extended his brother's life a little longer with his strip, and now that Starr himself is gone, I've extended it a little further by mentioning these things to you.

Going back through my shoebox of treasures,  I was struck by the fact that there is no comic strip today that comes within ten miles of this kind of work.  The world of comic strips has moved on and today excellence takes entirely different forms.  This genre is as gone as the ancient city of Carthage after the conquering Romans were done plowing salt into its fields.  




17 comments:

Richard said...

Great post, thank you

MORAN said...

He's like a combination of Humphrey Bogart and Hipshot Percussion.

chris bennett said...

Nah, I make it Krumm from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

kev ferrara said...

Expertly crafted. Not a trace of doubt; like the work of a fine watchmaker.

Anonymous said...

Excellent David! If you ever want to write a book on Leonard, I'd love to publish it.

Anonymous said...

I be Charles Classic Comics Press 🤣

Anonymous said...

I thought I was the only one who cut out comic strips, I cut out Gould’s j Sundays Dick Tracy. Unfortunately they didn’t withstand the strains of time.'

Robert Cosgrove said...

I have always loved Leonard Starr's On Stage and whenever I come back to it, it never disappoints. It took me a while to develop a real appreciation for his Annie, which, scandalously, has yet to be collected in book form. It was a little bit like a good friend having divorced his first wife, who I was very fond of, and marrying another. Hard to compete. Though I've come around on Annie, nothing quite compares to On Stage. Even the final few years, which suffer from shrinking print sizes, are as sharply written as ever.

I've never before encountered the story of Starr's brother, much less heard that one of the OS characters was inspired by him. I assume you got this from talking with Starr?

David Apatoff said...

Richard-- It's easy to make a great post about Leonard's work-- just show high rez images of his work and try to resist the temptation to talk.

MORAN and chris bennett-- good choices. The comics (like movies and video games and graphic novels) are overflowing with all kinds of powerful characters but very few few successfully create an interesting inner life to accompany that power.

kev ferrara-- Well put. That's exactly right.

David Apatoff said...

Charles (Classic Comics Press)-- I strongly recommend the 15 volume compilation of On Stage from Classic Comics Press. Charles Pelto performed a great public service (as well as a service to Leonard) by reviving that strip.

Anonymous-- what era of Dick Tracy did you cut out of the newspaper? There was so much to study and enjoy on the comics page during that period. Even if you didn't have 10 cents to buy a comic book, the newspaper comics page provided a free art gallery and a free art school every morning.

Robert Cosgrove-- Yes, I learned about this from Leonard.

Anonymous said...

David, it was Dick Tracy from the ‘60’s. You’re so right about the comic strips providing free art lessons and there were so many of them, so varied, so funny and so well drawn. L’l Abner, Beetle Bailey, Prince Valiant, Blondie. There were 2 strips (I don’t remember their names) which were just one giant panel chock full of some fanciful little people in their villages with a lot of text describing the scene.
Let’s see ChatGpt create anything nearly as good as that.

al mcluckie said...

David , am a big fan of Starr , that you saw him and Fuchs at the very end says a lot . You mentioned a while back possibly posting about Al Williamson - would enjoy your thoughts on him . I recently looked at his Corrigan , where C. is trapped on a dying billionaire's isle with a Stewart Granger modeled character , an example of his peak ability .

Paul Sullivan said...

Anonymous—was that "The Teenie Weenies" by William Donahey?

Anonymous said...

Paul, thanks for your help but after a goggle search I don’t believe so, in the strip I remember ther panel was full of more characters and they weren’t quite so distinctive. The strip appeared Sundays in the NY Daily News.

JR said...

David, “This genre is as gone as the ancient city of Carthage after the conquering Romans were done plowing salt into its fields.”

Let me say that the story of plowing salt into Carthage fields is a modern invention. Ancient sources refer to drawing a plough over various cities, but 1) as a ritual act, 2) no source mentions ancient Romans plowing salt anywhere 3) only one source mentions a ritual plowing at Carthage, only four centuries after its sacking.

Ridley, R. T. (1986). "To Be Taken with a Pinch of Salt: The Destruction of Carthage". Classical Philology. 81 (2): 140–146.

https://sci-hub.ru/10.2307/269786

A Legend of the Destruction of Carthage (Classical Philology, vol. 83, issue 1) (1988)

http://library.lol/scimag/10.2307/269635

The circumstantial evidence also supports scepticism:

"The lands surrounding Carthage were recognized as ager publicus (public lands), and were handed over to the local community and to Roman and Latin colonists. Shortly after the defeat of Carthage in the Third Punic War, this area was an important source of grain that was transported to Rome. Another interesting issue is that the Romans used salt as a deterrent to grazing animals. Pliny the Elder mentions this in his encyclopedia “Natural History”" 17.29

https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/curiosities/did-ancient-romans-sprinkle-with-salt-carthages-ground/

"There are other reasons to disbelieve this myth as well. Salt was a valuable commodity in those days and the Romans wouldn’t have used it profligately. They also wouldn’t have wanted to ruin land which could be use to feed the growing population of the empire. In 121 B.C. the Tribune Gaius Gracchus intended to start a Roman colony at the site of Carthage. It failed for various reasons, but it wouldn’t have been considered if the land around Carthage had been salted."

https://www.quora.com/Did-the-Romans-really-salt-Carthage/answer/Robin-Levin-3

As it is with the facts, so be it with the poetic meaning of the comparison. Though, my comment by this point may well be an overreaction. You may have ended on an especially dramatic note simply following the narrative manner of Leonard Starr, and Lajos Egri. In that case, we are looking forward to a sequel, plausibly featuring a turn of events.

David Apatoff said...

JR--Wow. Every time I'm sent back to do my homework on the Punic wars, I find the struggle between Rome and Carthage such an astonishing tale I'm tempted to forsake art altogether and start a new blog devoted entirely to a discussion of that rivalry.

I know that the story of the salt has been around for at least 200 years, including at Cambridge. Most recently it was reasserted in 2001 by Rufus Fears who, although a popularizer, was a Harvard PhD who wrote extensively about Roman military history. He cites Appian's Roman History I, pp. 509-647 as his authority, but I do not have it and cannot check. I do have Livy's War With Hannibal on my shelf but that doesn't extend beyond Scipio's defeat of Hannibal in 202 BC.

It would certainly be understandable, after Carthage kept reviving itself to threaten the existence of Rome again and again, that Rome would want to pulverize Carthage in a way that would prevent it from ever coming back again. Those were the orders to the Roman generals after the final conquest. Salt in the soil was a known Biblical punishment/curse for disobedience in other cities in the middle east. But ultimately, I concede that if a "fact" isn't found in Polybius, it's not a reliable fact about the second Punic war, and Polybius says nothing about salt. So henceforth I'll stop using the story about salt, pending some more definitive resolution. Can I still use the story of the Carthaginians throwing their babies into the fire to appease Baal, or Hannibal's slaughter of the 70,000 Roman soldiers at the battle of Cannae, please?

Anonymous-- Dick Tracy in the 1960s was such a wildly eccentric period, it's difficult to imagine how AI could possibly trace that path (although I've been properly chided here never to say never.) I've written about that loony Mr. Bribery and his cigar smoking cat (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2007/09/mad-eccentrics.html ) but you raise a good point, and perhaps people should be exposed to more of Gould's art. Maybe I can bring back a few memories from your childhood collection.

al mcluckie-- Yes, Williamson certainly had a thing for Stewart Granger, didn't he?
He has that close up in Incredible Science Fiction #32 that might as well be a movie poster of Granger. I agree Williamson did some fine work in Corrigan, but for me his EC work (including that unused story in Witzend no. 1) through his King Features Flash Gordon will always be my sentimental favorite period.

Vanderwolff said...

What an intimate, respectful look at the very real loss behind an unforgettable character that fired some of Leonard Starr's best passages.

Thanks again for unlocking another cool cellar of wonder in these gray, jaded times.