National Cartoonist Society Profile: Paul Fung Jr.

Born Seattle Washington, March 9, 1923. Graduated from Pratt Institute. From age three, I grew up with every great cartoonist -- called all "Uncle". Marion DeBeck was my godmother. Didn't realize how lucky I was to mingle with such great company till later in life. Nor of Dad's reputation -- at four was in "Our Gang" comedies -- Did vaudeville for a few years, plus movie shorts -- then some radio kids shows, Was a New York Yankees baseball team mascot via Lefty Gomez, Gerhig & Demaggio in 1936 to 39, flew with Chaunalt, in the 14th, 7th, 5th & 2oth -- Air Force, CBI. Worked in advertising agencies after discharge in 1946. Artist, art director, production manager and account executive. Then King Features Syndicate for eighteen years as artist for special service department, drew Blondie comic book for forty years in all, over 500 comic books. Am proud of being voted best book artist and humorist by NCS in 1964 and 1980. Live on a 62 acre plot of land with my wife Carol, and a son who returned after wife problems. Daughter moved back too, after a ten year Army career. Have 4 grand children -- all girls. Working on animal cook book and entering local art shows. Still drawing (with a slanted view).

Ted Cowan & Reg Bunn's...The Spider

"I do not allow failure in my army of crime. Should we fail, I promise you a most unhealthy future." Those few lines just about sum up the delightfully creepy British strip The Spider that sprang from the boys' anthology title Lion on June 26, 1965. This strange new anti-hero, similar in ways to Italy's master criminal Diabolique, was created by writer Ted Cowan and artist Reg Bunn who spun yarns of terror and adventure for the brilliant megalomaniac 'King of all Crooks". An evil scientist who turned to crime, the mysterious Spider sported a black bulletproof high-tech suit, and wielded two spectacular guns, one shooting a paralysing gas, while the other a sticky web making mesh. This boastful Shakespearean spouting thief had a sleek helicar that looked like an overgrown French coffee press which whisked him away from the boys in blue or other crime lords that wanted to see the despicable fiend dead. With the help of his two main cronies, Professor Pelham and Roy Ordini, this trio waged all out war in their quest to take over the underworld from their secret castle hideout transplanted stone by stone from Scotland. The earlier Cowan stories were cast in a darker tone, before writer Jerry Seigel of Superman fame took over the feature adding more pulpy aspects like spacemen, sorcerers, and making the character more heroic.

But give me the early Spider thwarting New York's finest, namely Detectives Bob Gilmore and Pete Trask at every bizarre twist and turn. But if the Spider was tough on cops, he acted the same to crooks, or even his own men, who could get a shot of deforming face spray if they disappointed him in his conquest of crime. Reg Bunn created a startling figure that resembled a sinister Mr. Spock with his jet black hair and Vulcan ears that would often defy the laws of gravity with his acrobatic prowess on the Big Apple's skyscrapers. Bunn's moody imagery coupled with Cowan's zany stories had our anti-hero fighting monster arachnids, wild bears, giant pythons, and even Mirror Man projected hypnotising dinosaurs! Too bad The Shadow never caught up with his wild bombastic character, The Spider would have given him a run for his money.

National Cartoonist Society Profile: John Prentice

Born in Whitney, Texas. Enlisted in the United States Navy for six year and was bombed at Pearl Harbor Served on two destroyers thru eight major battles and campaigns. Studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, and worked for a short time on staff for a small publishing company, then starting freelancing in New York. I did mostly comic books, advertising, and magazine covers .Started drawing "Rip Kirby" in 1956. Was awarded the Silver Plaque for best story strip three times and "Rip Kirby" is an honorary member of the Honor Legion of the police department of New York City. Member of National Cartoonist Society and Society of Illustrators. My wife, Antonia and I reside in Westport, Connecticut.

Doug Wildey's The Saint, Stretch Bannon, & Jonny Quest

One of the earliest strips Doug Wildey worked on was Leslie Charteris famous thrill seeker, The Saint. I've heard that one day the creator saw the initials of his character, Simon Templar, and imagined the nickname "Saint" would be the perfect title for his creation. His adventures have been documented in books, films, radio, comics, and television since the early thirties. Charteris even wrote his newspaper strip from 1948 to 1961, which was syndicated worldwide by the New York Herald Tribune. When Wildey was called to helped finish out the series, he took over the artistic chores from Bob Lubbers and continued in Bob's style for a few months before developing his own unique look for the character. Even though Doug relied heavily on photo references, his Saint's new look was to be of great importance in the near future. Wildey's dapper man of the world, now with a classic goatee, quickly developed into the prototype for Dr. Benton Quest of Hanna-Barbara's Jonny Quest fame. Later, other major Quest characters were developed when Wildey pitched his own Sunday strip about an globe trotting race car driver, Stretch Bannon, that unfortunately never caught on with any syndicates. But don't take my word for it, this is what Doug had to say.

"As everybody in the illustrative cartoon business has done, I once tried an automobile comic strip. Because this whole country runs on the automobile economy, right? I know at least five other cartoonists -- I can't name them all any more, but I think they include Leonard Starr, Mel Keifer, Frank Frazetta -- who all tried something with an automotive background. In my case, my guy was sort of an automobile designer. He raced cars. He had this glamorous European background, and raced on American tracks. I called him Stretch Bannon. I liked the name Stretch Bannon. Then, later on, I tried another strip about a writer-artist team that traveled the world getting into adventures. The name was Race Dunhill. So I put the Race and the Bannon together and that's where Race Bannon came from. I originally named the show (Jonny Quest) The Saga of Chip Balloo. It was a working title, I wasn't really serious, but that was it for the beginning."

But the interesting part is when you look at those few Sundays try-outs, if Stretch Bannon was an early prototype of Race Bannon, his young sidekick mechanic called "Chip" was a dead ringer for Jonny Quest, though older than the boy the series finally settled on. Apparently, the speed required of producing both a daily and Sunday strip, coupled with Wildey's comic book work, proved too much for him. As Dick Ayers wrote," Doug had me ink some of his Saint daily strips back in "60 or "61. We'd meet in a local parking lot to trade penciled strips and inked strips." You can see in some of the work the heavy line of Ayers creep in over Doug's fine line pencils which was always a stark contrast to Doug's inks, but as any syndicate man will tell you those deadlines can be a killer and you have to do what you can to keep the feature moving. As Wildey said to Russ Heath when he started to draw the short lived Lone Ranger feature,"Any illustrative strip is going to fall behind in deadlines and you will call your artist friends (to help) and stay up working all night." Well thank goodness Doug worked on all these strips from the past or we might never had all the wonderful Quest characters today.