#sharman divono

[onlylonelylatino]

Tarzan by Dan Spiegle

[spaceintruderdetector]

Legend of Bruce Lee Comic Strip Vol 1

https://archive.org/details/legend-of-bruce-lee-vol-1-1983/page/n1/mode/2up

The Los Angeles Times Syndicate launched The Legend of Bruce Lee comic strip, featuring fictional stories about the deceased actor and martial artist, in May 1982. The syndicate had originally approached veteran comic strip creators Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles about doing a Bruce Lee strip in 1978. The project never got off the ground, and five years later the syndicate tried again.   Intended for downscale and very young audiences, The Legend of Bruce Lee was intended to help boost newspaper circulation by attracting younger or less well-educated readers who don't normally read newspapers. It was written by Sharman DiVono (who herself had martial arts training), and illustrated by Fran Matera (with uncredited assists from Dick Kulpa).   The Legend of Bruce Lee only ran until late 1982 or early 1983.  

[thisiscomics]

This was an interesting diversion from the normal format- two or three of the full colour Sunday strips used the title/credits panel for a bit of background to the story, rather than simply using the space as part of the sequential narrative. My assumption (since the credits are vague) was that this was part of Larry Niven’s contribution to the strip, but that’s purely based on a prejudiced assumption that as I recognise his name as a sci-fi author, he is the most likely to use what might be seen as a more literary device than the standard comic strip approach. His name appears on a small percentage of the strips in this collection, which might explain why it was only a brief break in format. Or it could all be coincidence- I have absolutely no idea what each individual’s contribution was, and should note that, with or without Niven, the credited team of DiVono and Harris produced a lot of enjoyable strips, so certainly deserve a lot of the credit for these enjoyable tales.

In a comic strip context, the idea is reminiscent of The Legion of Super-Heroes Encyclopedia Galactica captions, which in itself was likely inspired by older works of science-fiction, particularly Asimov’s Foundation series, which again seems to point to a science-fiction writer.

As these Star Trek collections are, unfortunately, devoid of any significant introductions or editorial/historical commentary, this is all guess work. It’s one of the disappointments of the collection- unlike the Judge Dredd and 2000AD collections by Hachette, which all aim to have at least an introduction and some sort of contextualising text where possible, Eaglemoss simply tend to provide a generally quite superficial introduction, which feels a bit of a missed opportunity. They are not completely devoid of interest, but feel closer to a blurb than any sort of critical engagement of the text. (The ‘Story So Far’ page is utterly pointless, as it mostly gives a summary of what is to come rather than what came before, which is really quite strange). It’s likely that the finer details of the strip’s creation are maybe not known, given its original ephemeral format, but it would be useful to learn more, or have this confirmed. At least the stories speak for themselves, regardless of any assumptions I might make about who does what.

From ‘Star Trek’ by Sharman DiVono, Ron Harris & Larry Niven, in Star Trek: The Newspaper Strips Volume 2

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Legend of Bruce Lee Comic Strip Vol 2 

https://archive.org/details/legend-of-bruce-lee-vol-2-1983/page/n1/mode/2up

The Los Angeles Times Syndicate launched The Legend of Bruce Lee comic strip, featuring fictional stories about the deceased actor and martial artist, in May 1982. The syndicate had originally approached veteran comic strip creators Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles about doing a Bruce Lee strip in 1978. The project never got off the ground, and five years later the syndicate tried again. Intended for downscale and very young audiences, The Legend of Bruce Lee was intended to help boost newspaper circulation by attracting younger or less well-educated readers who don't normally read newspapers. It was written by Sharman DiVono (who herself had martial arts training), and illustrated by Fran Matera (with uncredited assists from Dick Kulpa). The Legend of Bruce Lee only ran until late 1982 or early 1983.