The Adventurous Decade: Comic Strips In The Thirties

by Ron Goulart

Long out of print, The Adventurous Decade is now available again, covering the background and art of such strips as Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, Scorchy Smith, Dick Tracy, Terry and the Pirates, Prince Valiant, The Phantom, Brick Bradford, The Spirit, and Don Winslow together with many seldom-discussed strips such as Bronc Peeler, Tex Throne, Roy Powers, Dan Dunn and Tailspin Tommy. While the text of the book, based on interviews with such comic strip luminaries as Noel Sickles, Milton Caniff, Roy Crane, Alfred Andriola, Dick Moore, Mel Graff, Leslie Turner and other improtant strip artists, remains unchanged (why change a classic?), the book has been totally redesigned in a 9 inch by 12 inch landscape format to showcase the fabulous artwork from these strips. The reprint is printed on deluxe heavy paper stock with all new illustrations, many taken from rarely seen original artwork.

Genres: Comics, History

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Pseudonyms: Howard Lee; Frank S Shawn; Kenneth Robeson; Con Steffanson; Josephine Kains; Joseph Silva; William Shatner.
Ron Goulart is a cultural historian and novelist. Besides writing extensively about pulp fiction—including the seminal Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of Pulp Magazines (1972)—Goulart has written for the pulps since 1952, when the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction published his first story, a sci-fi parody of letters to the editor. Since then he has written dozens of novels and countless short stories, spanning genres and using a variety of pennames, including Kenneth Robeson, Joseph Silva, and Con Steffanson. In the 1990s, he became the ghostwriter for William Shatner’s popular TekWar novels. Goulart’s After Things Fell Apart (1970) is the only science-fiction novel to ever win an Edgar Award.

In the 1970s Goulart wrote novels starring series characters like Flash Gordon and the Phantom, and in 1980 he published Hail Hibbler, a comic sci-fi novel that began the Odd Jobs, Inc. series. Goulart has also written several comic mystery series, including six books starring Groucho Marx. Having written for comic books, Goulart produced several histories of the art form, including the Comic Book Encyclopedia (2004).

Reviews

[Raymond Naval · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little disappointing. It's not really about the comic strips but more about the writers and artists. And even then, there are so many names of artists and writers dropped with little extraneous info about them. For most, it just states how long they worked on a specific strip. Another complaint is there are mentions of strips with interesting details (like artist's initials hidden in the artwork) but they don't show the strips themselves. This book has samples of strips in nearly every page but for the most part they don't show the ones that are mentioned in the text.

Finally, the decision to mix in comic strips with text throughout the book makes it confusing to read. Mostly because the strip doesn't necessarily match up with the content of the text. The strip is sometimes mentioned on a previous page or on the following page. I ended up reading the text to the end of the chapter and then I would go back and read through all the comic strips.