LEGENDARY HEROES #16

SMILIN' JACK

Zack Mosley (1906-1993) was born in Hickory, Oklahoma and graduated in 1925 from Shawnee High School.  Soon after he enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the Chicago Art Institute.  From there he became an assistant to Dick Calkins on his comic strip "Buck Rogers".  Mosley had a fascination with airplanes and flying that went back to his childhood days in Oklahoma when, at age 7, he saw a crashed plane and the sight of it fired his imagination.  Zack began taking flying lessons in 1932 which inspired him to create a comic strip titled "On the Wing" about a trio of flying students.  It was a Sunday feature that began running on October 1, 1933, and the lead character was named Mack Martin.  But Chicago Tribune editor Joseph Medill Patterson never liked the title or character name and changes were made.  Mack Martin became Jack Martin, and the nickname Smilin' Jack was in reference to Mosley himself, who colleagues called Smilin' Zack.  The strip became "The Adventures of Smilin' Jack" on December 31, 1933 and became the most popular aviation comic of the 1930s and 1940s.  At the height of its' popularity it appeared in over 300 newspapers and in 1940 was voted the favorite strip of American children.  America had a romance with flying in those days and Zack Mosley tapped into it.  Mosley became a licensed pilot on November 13, 1936, and over the years he owned nine planes and logged 3000 hours at the controls.  During WWII Mosley flew Civil Air Patrol anti-submarine flights off the coast of Florida.  Some people mistakenly thought that Smilin' Jack was modeled after Clark Gable when in fact his appearance was based on air racing star Roscoe Turner.

Dell Comics began publishing newspaper strip reprints in their anthology comic books in 1936, and in Jack's own title in 1940.  Whitman publishing carried Smilin' Jack in their Big Little Books series and released an original novel "Smilin' Jack and the Daredevil Girl Pilot" in 1942 with 20 pages of illustrations (these larger bound editions were sometimes called Big Big Books).  Jack appeared on radio on the Mutual Broadcasting System from February 13 until May 19, 1939.  The 15-minute episodes aired three times a week at 5:30 and was sponsored by Tootsie Rolls.  For 10 Tootsie Roll candy wrappers the company offered a flying chart "just like the one Jack uses".  The program opened each episode with the announcer shouting "Clear the runway for Smilin' Jack!" over the roar of an airplane.  In 1943 Universal Studios released a movie serial of "The Adventures of Smilin' Jack" in which Jack is working with the Chinese government to stop the Black Samurai, a Japanese spy ring led by German operative Fraulein von Teufel.

The comic strip, which became a daily & Sunday strip after its' name change, ran for 40 years, finally ending on April 1, 1973.  Zack Mosley proved to be influential in the expansion of NASCAR racing.  Mosley was friends with NASCAR founder Bill France, Sr., and Mosley put information about NASCAR activities into the strip.  Soon, racers from all over the country were getting together for NASCAR events.  In May 1948 Zack Mosley became the first civilian recipient of the Naval Air Reserve certificate of merit for boosting aviation and civil defense through his comic strip.