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[Robb_K]

That 1940s Sherlock Holmes parody comic strip was pencilled by the pen-named, Beck The Alley Cop (Joe Beck), and inked by his oft-time partner, Otto Epperson, for Chesler Publications (for either a Chesler or a Centaur book.  It was similar to Gus Mager's Hawkshaw The Detective, Dinky Dinkerton, Inspector Klooz, Flatfoot Burns, and so many other comedy Holmes parodies.

Here is Page 1 of the 2-page extended gag, in comic book format (perhaps originally drawn for new comic book material, as opposed to having been adapted from comic strip format?):


I hope someone on this forum recognises it, and can lead me to the particular PD comic book series that printed it (I hope, regularly).

Thanks for any help.

[crashryan]

I wonder if it was ever printed. Even lazy editors would have fixed the spelling of "taxes" and taken the hyphen out of "maybe."

[Robb_K]

I wonder if it was ever printed. Even lazy editors would have fixed the spelling of "taxes" and taken the hyphen out of "maybe."

Perhaps it was never printed.  But I've seen many, many errors like that printed in commercially sold comic books.  And I've seen much more grievous amateurish errors than that.  Understaffed editorial offices often were putting out more issues each month than they could give proper attention during the earliest fledgling boom times in that business, between the late 1930s and the end of the 1940s.  Making deadlines to get the books to their distributors (meaning printing very soon after printing deadlines)was often more important than having no errors inside.  Not only were there grammatical and spelling errors, but also colourisation and printing errors, for which there was neither time (nor extra money) to print them over again.

The discolouration of the page looks more like that on a photo of the original page's artwork, rather than the artwork, itself.  This looks like a typical 1938-1945 Sherlock Holmes gag driven, short, comic book story, like those that appeared in Police Comics(Flatfoot Burns), Detective Picture Stories, Tops Comics(Dinky Dinkerton), Speed and Champ Comics (Padlock Holmes), Animal Fables (Hector The Inspector), Mystery Men Comics (Hemlock Shomes), Fawcett's Funny Animals (Sherlock Monk & Chuck), Mickey Mouse (Shamrock Bones), United Features (Hawkshaw The Detective), and Young King Cole/Criminals On The run (Inspector Klooz).

I wonder if it is from one of the Punch Comics missing from CB+ and DCM, because Beck and Epperson were regulars, teaming up to work on most of the Punch Comics, including an advertising page for Issue No. 1.  Issue numbers 3-8 are said to have never been used.  But I also wonder about that.  Beck and Epperson teamed up to work on Punch's "Punch and Cutey", and "Happy Landing", "Little Joe", "Daffy Dills", "Jest For Fun", and "Handy Andy", as well as "Foxy Grandpa", and also drew several of the magazine's front covers.

[SuperScrounge]

According to Heritage Auctions https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/story-page/joe-beck-and-otto-eppers-gumshoe-pussyfoot-sleuths-story-page-original-art-group-of-2-chesl/a/322130-49013.s it's by Joe Beck & Otto Eppers for a Chesler/Dynamic title.

[Robb_K]

According to Heritage Auctions https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/story-page/joe-beck-and-otto-eppers-gumshoe-pussyfoot-sleuths-story-page-original-art-group-of-2-chesl/a/322130-49013.s it's by Joe Beck & Otto Eppers for a Chesler/Dynamic title.

Yes, HA is where I got the scan of the first page, and I saw the Ches......, so, I knew it was a Chesler book.  I just wanted to avoid having to look through every book on CB+ to find out from where it came, and if it was an on-going feature.  I figured that someone on here might be familiar enough with the Chesler books to know which one it was.  Your reference to it made me check it again, and learn that it was a 2-page gag, which I had guessed as most likely, but wasn't sure if it might have been a 3 or 4-page story.  Thanks.

[movielover]

Doubt it was published. A search of GCD does not yield anything for that title.

[Robb_K]

Doubt it was published. A search of GCD does not yield anything for that title.

I already knew that.  I never would have posted this thread on this forum before checking that.

First of all, the yellowing of the paper makes it look like it is newsprint, rather than a photo or scan of inked originals.  And original artwork is generally a lot more protected over its many years of storage, by how ever many owners it had, than comic books that got out to the public.

Secondly, I have found many complete books for which GCD has no entry, and hundreds of gags and stories which GCD cannot find in a search.  On top of that, I have found complete books in GCD under their proper publisher, which contain absolute completely indexed listings of their contents, which when a given story or gag page is searched, no entry is found (e.g. many books are not yet completely cross-referenced). 

I have notified GCD administration of the first many of these deficiencies I've found, but as yet, I only have received one note saying they have corrected it, and THAT was almost a year after I submitted my information.  So, just because a gag or story can't be found on GCD by a normal search by title or author, or character name, definitely does NOT mean that it was never published.

I think it is a reasonable bet that that 2-page gag WAS published in a Chesler or Centaur book.  However, it is NOT in any of the 70+ Chesler/Centaur books I downloaded from CB+.  But, I only download heavily comedy-based and cartoony styled books; and these Sherlock Holmes parodies sometimes are included with more realistic Human-figure stories in action/police/crime themed books.