In 1977, science-fiction author Ron Goulart teamed up with comic book artist Gil Kane to create the science-fiction/adventure strip STAR HAWKS. It ran in THE MENOMENEE FALLS GAZETTE from 3 October 1977 until 2 May 1981 -- three and a half years and 1,252 daily strips.
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| Ron Goulart and Gil Kane. |
Concerning the origin of the strip, Kane recalled in an interview with THE COMICS JOURNAL:
"I got a call from Ron Goulart, who told me he'd been having some talks with Flash Fairfield, who is the art editor of the comics at [the newspaper syndicate] NEA, and they wanted to see me about going to work on that strip. I met with them at that time. Ron had done about two weeks of material, but it was very far from where we went with it. So we reworked the material, and I'm very strong ... on romance and lyricism, and I started to advance the cause of that kind of material and make it less satirical and more of a classic adventure strip. [For the hero,] originally I had James Coburn in mind. ... The hero's friend, Chavez, was modeled after a bald-headed Victor McLaglen."
Goulart wrote the scripts until Archie Goodwin took over in 1979, followed by Roger McKenzie with occasional assists from Roger Stern until 1981. Kane produced most of the art except for a period of illness when Ernie Colón and Howard Chaykin filled in for him (uncredited).
Besides writing science-fiction, Ron Goulart (January 13, 1933 – January 14, 2022) authored numerous books on popular culture, including The Hardboiled Dicks: An Anthology and Study of Pulp Detective Fiction (1967), Comic Book Culture: An Illustrated History (1980), The Dime Detectives (1982) and The Great Comic Book Artists (1986). He wrote two STAR HAWKS novels, as well as authoring the paperback adaptations of Warren's VAMPIRELLA. He also ghosted THE PHANTOM, FLASH GORDON and THE AVENGER novels
With a career spanning half a century, the Latvian-born Gil Kane (April 6, 1926 – January 31, 2000) is well-known by comic art fans for his superior work with DC and Marvel, working on characters such as Green Lantern, The Atom, Adam Warlock, Iron Fist and Conan. He also experimented with comics in other formats, such as the magazine-sized HIS NAME IS . . . SAVAGE and the sword and sorcery graphic novel, BLACK MARK. A highly-respected artist, Kane was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame and the Harvey Award Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, both in 1997.
STAR HAWKS employed an unconventional format for a newspaper comic strip by using a two-tier layout as opposed to the conventional single-tier strips that were considered the standard. This enabled Kane to expand the dimensions of the image for a greater dynamic. However, on 30 July 1979 he was asked to convert the strip to the traditional single-tier format. Kane was recognized for his work in 1977 by receiving the National Cartoonist Society Story Comic Strip Award.
STAR HAWKS has been reprinted several times by publishers such as Ace/Tempo paperbacks, Blackthorne Comics and Hermes Press.
Shown today is the first story-arc of this very exciting and imaginative adventure strip.
CHAPTER ONE: NAYDA
10/03/77 - 11/14/77
End of Chapter One.
While I had a subscription to THE MENOMONEE FALLS GAZETTE for several years back in the '70s, I stopped getting it *just* before this was added. While I'd seen bits of it throughout the years in articles on Gil Kane, it's nice to finally see the complete strips for the first chapter.
ReplyDeleteIt's great stuff, but that oddball two-tiered format was pretty much asking not to be added to a newspaper page-- especially since daily comics sections were already getting downsized enough by this point. Despite the visual impact this gave the strip, it's easy to see from an editorial vantage point why Kane was asked to go to a standard one-tier format.
Thanks for posting these, John!
-- hsc
It definitely was unconventional to use this format. Other than affording Kane considerably more artistic freedom to draw his panels I haven't found anything else that explains it. I wonder what the other cartoonists thought about it -- I can't see that they were thrilled at him being given twice the space as they got.
ReplyDeleteAnd even worse than Kane simply "getting more space to play with" is the likelihood that a newspaper would also have to drop a second strip from the daily lineup to make room for Kane's strip. (If the newspaper saved money by running Kane's strip instead of two other dailies, that was probably a further selling point.)
ReplyDelete-- hsc