Greg Clark Noir Art

  LEGENDARY HEROES #52 JOE FRIDAY - DRAGNET "Dragnet" was created and produced by actor Jack Webb who starred as Sgt. Joe Friday.  Webb had appeared on radio and in movies but "Dragnet" would make him a major star.  The idea came to Webb after his bit role as a police forensic scientist in the 1948 film noir "He Walked by Night", which was based on the true story of Erwin "Machine Gun" Walker who went on a crime spree in 1946.  The movie was shot in a semi-documentary style and starred Richard Basehart.  Marty Wynn, an LAPD Sergeant from Robbery Division who actually worked on the Walker case, was a technical advisor on the movie.  Wynn's true stories of real cases and investigative procedures inspired Webb to create a series that would be a true police procedural.  Webb began frequenting police headquarters and doing ride-alongs with night patrols.  He attended courses at the Police Academy and learned the authentic jargon used by police.  T

  LEGENDARY HEROES #51 CAPTAIN VIDEO AND HIS VIDEO RANGERS "Captain Video" was the first science fiction themed TV series to air on television and it was broadcast on the DuMont Television Network as a live show, not pre-taped.  DuMont was a pioneer of early commercial television, rivalling the big three - CBS, NBC, & ABC - and was owned by the Allen B. DuMont Laboratories that manufactured DuMont television sets.  The network began operating on June 28, 1942, well before other networks and pretty much before an audience existed.  They would later partner with Paramount Pictures and created one of the biggest stars of the 1950s, Jackie Gleason and his show "The Honeymooners".  Despite this success, DuMont was never on firm financial ground as they were impeded by the FCC that restricted the network's growth in favor of the "big three", and DuMont went out of business on August 6, 1956. Jim Caddigan, DuMont's program director, reportedly came up

  LEGENDARY HEROES #50 STEVE CANYON By 1946 cartoonist Milton Caniff had achieved worldwide recognition with his "Terry and the Pirates" comic strip, but he wasn't happy with his situation because the Chicago Tribune who syndicated the strip owned all the rights to the character.  When Marshall Field of the Chicago Sun-Times approached the top cartoonists of the Trib with an attractive offer of character ownership and hefty contracts if they came to work for him, Caniff jumped ship.  (Chester Gould of "Dick Tracy" and Harold Gray of "Little Orphan Annie" were among those approached, but decided to stay.)  Caniff's last "Terry" strip appeared in December 1946 and a few weeks later his new strip, "Steve Canyon" debuted on January 13, 1947.  Field Enterprises syndicated the strip through King Features which actually distributed it to newspapers.  Due to Caniff's popularity with "Terry and the Pirates", his new comic d

  LEGENDARY HEROES #49 BRUCE GENTRY Bruce Gentry was an aviation adventure comic strip created by Ray Bailey and was distributed by the Post-Hall Syndicate.  The strip debuted on March 25, 1945 and by July it was being carried in 35 newspapers, which was quite respectable for a new comic.  Part of the success could be that Bailey's style was reminiscent of Milton Caniff of "Terry and the Pirates" fame, and for good reason.  Ray Bailey had been an assistant to Caniff.  In the comic strip Bruce Gentry is a former Air Force pilot who finds himself working for a small airline in South America.  There he finds enough subversive and criminal activity to keep followers of the comic strip enthralled.  But soon Gentry was flying all over the world to exotic locales and high adventure.  If the storyline sounds vaguely familiar it could be because Milton Caniff used the same plot when he launched "Steve Canyon" on January 13, 1947 after walking away from "Terry and th