[crashryan]

I never got into "Kerry Drake" when it was in the newspapers. By the 1960s the strip had become much tamer and a lot of time was wasted on soap opera. Thanks to CB+ I'm able to read the early episodes. This was a solid strip and great fun to read. The "Dick Tracy" influence is obvious in the grotesque villains and the use of crazy traps. (Why shoot our nemesis right away when we can leave him tied to a chair for a few hours while a bottle of nitro moves along a conveyor into a furnace to blow him up?) That's as far as it goes, though. Allen Saunders' stories move fast with enough twists to keep things interesting. I like the art (by whichever ghost Andriola was using) more than Tracy's. The semi-realistic style is a better fit for the strip's "scientific detection" theme. Good stuff.

Link to the book: Kerry Drake Detective Cases 3