Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The Dead End Kids-LafeThomas-1941

This was a revelation to me! As a longtime fan of moviedom's Dead End Kids in all their various permutations, I had never once run across any mention that they had their own strip! GCD has it running in at least four 1941 issues of THE SHADOW, all with art by Lafe Thomas. To describe Thomas's artistic style as minimalist would be an understatement. It's crude and virtually free of backgrounds. That said, he often captures remarkable cartoonish likenesses of Billy Halop, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabe Dell and particularly Leo Gorcey. One reason this series didn't last long was undoubtedly that by 1941, the group had already splintered with the majority ending up as the East Side Kids for a different studio!








1 comment:

Mark Mayerson said...

That final panel is the dock set from the film Dead End.