Two Two-Tiered Comic Strips
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Comic strips of two rows became a rarity in newspapers (Minute Movies, Star Hawks) but in magazines and webcomics they are fairly common, today we look at two double row comics, one from a magazine and one from the interwebs.
The Life and Times of Boarder Bob
A bit over thirty years ago a young magazine started running a two tiered comic strip.
The Whistler Museum in British Columbia remembers (Snow)Boarder Bob.
Olivier (Oli) Roy is “an artist snowboarder” who first came to Whistler “right after high school in 1990” to attend a Craig Kelly Camp. He moved here, three years later, after art college.
During this era, the Ontario-based Snowboard Canada Magazine was born. Broadening their output, they enlisted Roy, as he describes, a “cool artist.”
Thus, Boarder Bob – the character and comic strip – were born. Border Bob “moves to Whistler to pursue [his] dream of being a pro snowboarder, but he’s very delusional … he thinks he’s a big shot…” But, he’s not. After a season or two, “he gets a sidekick, Jed Shred.”
Roy collaborated with local Glenn Rogers – known for his comic panels in The Whistler Question (a former, local publication started in 1976) – to produce the strip. The two worked together for eight years (“if I remember correctly”, states Roy), producing the 8 panel, 2 row, half-page ‘Boarder Bob’ strip. Published four times a year, “we had a lot of fun” poking fun at the “life of snowboarding in Whistler and on the West Coast.”
Rogers would usually come up with the story. Admittedly, Roy states “I was never good at writing the stories, I was more the artist and inker.” He would receive the script and then sketch it, all by hand, on an 11 x 17 piece of cardboard:
“I would pencil it and then use China ink [for] the black and white and use markers, like alcohol markers and a bit of watercolor.” It was all hand-lettered.
From 2009 is Michel Beaudry for Pique Newsmagazine giving a fuller profile of artist Olivier Roy:
Consider the case of Olivier Roy. Painter, sign-maker, cartoonist, graphic artist – and, oh-by-the-way a long-time pro snowboarder and coach too – Olivier’s art has quietly entered the subconscious of Whistlerites over the last 16 years or so that he has lived in Sea to Sky Country. Own a Prior snowboard? Chances are, it’s Oli’s graphics that you’re standing on when you’re ripping down the Khyber. Taking the Symphony Chair up the backside of Whistler Mountain for a little sightseeing tour? Those are Oli’s logos mounted on the lift stations. Raced in the Test of Metal lately? That’s an Oli-designed race jersey you’re wearing. Dropping in on Art Walk for a taste of local talent? Yep, those are Oli’s canvases on display too.
Jazz Age
Ted Slampyak, or Ted Kinyak but always Slampyak to me, began with Jazz Age Chronicles and other comic books. For six years he was the artist for the Annie (aka Little Orphan Annie) newspaper comic strip. Now he has returned to Jazz Age as a webcomic on Ted’s Substack.
Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool brings us up-to-date:
Born in 1965 in Philadelphia, he graduated from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in 1987. Soon after, he created the comic series Jazz Age Chronicles, a period adventure mix of magic and detectives set in the 1920s–1930s, which originally ran from around 1988 to 1992 from EF Graphics and Caliber Comics, inspired by the role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. He revived the series as a webcomic in 2002-2006, first as part of the Modern Tales subscription site Adventurestrips.com until it folded, later as part of Graphic Smash, until that closed in 2012, and eventually memory-holed. Well, he has now started republishing the Jazz Age Chronicles that were never released in print, for free on his Facebook and Substack. So far, over 100 strips have been uploaded every weekday since September, across four arcs with more to come. Ted has said on Facebook that this could lead to a print edition or a new Jazz Age comic if enough people sign up to the Substack. The Power Of Silas Rourke starts here, No Escape starts here, Anne Howe starts here, and the current story Chicago starts here. And its gorgeous, don’t you think?
Jazz Age is the continuing story of a group of adventurers battling threats both supernatural and worldly in 1920s Boston, including a rather snooty over-achieving Harvard archaeologist and a blue-collar underachieving Scollay Square private eye, and the people around them. They’re flawed but earnest and they’re usually just about up to the task in the end. For the most part.
The stories I’m running here are from the early 2000s webcomic that was a follow-up to the black-and-white comic book Jazz Age Chronicles published in the early ‘90s by Caliber Press (and available in graphic novel form here). You can just start reading from scratch — and I think you’ll figure things out pretty quickly — but if you want a heads-up on who’s who…
In one of the stories, Anne Howe,” Ted has fun with comic strips.
The conclusion to the “Anne Howe” story includes a wink to Ted’s real newspaper comic strip:
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