Scorchy Smith
| Scorchy Smith | |
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| Author(s) | John Terry |
| Launch date | 1930 |
| End date | 1961 |
| Syndicate(s) | AP Newsfeatures |
| Genre(s) | Adventure, children, teens, adults |
Scorchy Smith was an American adventure comic strip created by artist John Terry that ran from 1930 to 1961.
Scorchy Smith was a pilot-for-hire whose initial adventures took him across America, fighting criminals and aiding damsels in distress. Later, Scorchy traveled the world fighting spies and foreign aggression.
Charles Lindbergh's 1927 transatlantic flight increased interest in aviation, and together with several other flight-related adventure strips, Scorchy Smith debuted in 1930, created by John Terry for AP Newsfeatures. When Terry developed fatal tuberculosis in 1933, the strip was assigned to Noel Sickles. Sickles increased the popularity of Scorchy Smith, which became AP's leading strip, creating a new school of cartooning in the process. Sickles' impressionistic style and cinematic compositions, plus his frequent use of areas of pure black ink and Zipatone shading, was dramatically different from any other cartoonist at the time.Milton Caniff's mastery of the medium is frequently attributed to his collaborations with Sickles.
In fall 1936, Sickles researched Scorchy Smith’s circulation, information that AP Newsfeatures never shared with their artists. Estimating that the strip was running in 250 papers across the country, Sickles determined that the syndicate's monthly take approximated $2,500 a month, of which he, as both scripter and artist, received only $125. Sickles asked for a raise, and when his request was refused, he quit cartooning to become a magazine illustrator.
Sickles was succeeded by Bert Christman, who began drawing and scripting the strip November 23, 1936. Christman, a cartoonist who also co-created the Sandman for DC Comics, joined the U.S. Navy as an aviation cadet in June 1938, resigning his commission three years later to join the American Volunteer Group being recruited to fly for the Chinese Air Force. He was shot down, bailed out, then strafed and killed in Burma as a pilot with the AVG, by then famous as the Flying Tigers.
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