Charlie Chan by Alfred Andriola

Alfred James Andriola, who lived from May 24, 1912 to March 29, 1983, was an American cartoonist best known for the comic strip Kerry Drake. Kerry Drake was a comic strip created for Publishers Syndicate by Andriola as artist and Allen Saunders as uncredited writer, for which he won a Reuben Award in 1970. For his picture, see his biography card at the National Cartoonists Society, of which he was a member. Andriola was born in New York City on May 24, 1912 and grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey. He studied at Cooper Union and Columbia University in New York City intending to becoming a writer. Instead, following a fan letter he wrote to Milton Caniff, a cartoonist (creater of Terry and the Pirates), he became his assistant, working with him on Terry and the Pirates and Scorchy Smith, an adventure comic strip created by John Terry that ran from 1930 to 1961. Scorchy Smith was a pilot-for-hire whose initial adventures, set in the 1930s, took him across America, fighting criminals and aiding damsels in distress. Andriola's first strip was Charlie Chan, a fictional character Chinese American detective created by Earl Derr Biggers, an adaptation of the popular detective novels for the McNaught Syndicate. For five months in 1943 he drew a minor superhero, Captain Triumph. For a year he drew the strip Dan Dunn with writer Allen Saunders an American writer, journalist, and cartoonist who wrote Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Mary Worth, and Kerry Drake . Dunn was cancelled on October 3, 1943 and the next day their strip Kerry Drake debuted. Originally a district attorney's investigator, Drake became a municipal police officer when Sandy Burns, his secretary and fiancee, was murdered by Trinket and Bulldozer. As both a DA's man and a city cop he battled a series of flamboyant villains like Bottleneck, Mother Whistler, and No-Face. Andriola was assisted (and ghosted) by artists Fran Matera, Jerry Robinson an artist best known for his work on DC Comics' Batman line of comics during the 1940s and Sururi Gumen, the last of whom shared credit with Andriola starting in 1976. Drake was canceled after Andriola died on March 29, 1983. Andriola also drew the strip It's Me Dilly under the pseudonym Alfred James from 1957 to 1960.

(annexgalleries.com)

CHARLIE CHAN Legendary police detective Charlie Chan has solved mysteries in all forms of media -- including a syndicated comic strip by cartoonist Alfred Andriola which appeared in newspapers from 1938-1942. Playwright and novelist Earl Derr Biggers created the Chinese-American detective for his 1925 novel The House Without a Key. A healthy alternative to Asian stereotypes in fiction of the era, the character proved so popular he soon dominated the media -- in addition to the six novels by Biggers, Charlie Chan has also appeared in some four dozen films, plus radio programs, television series, and a number of comics. The classic comic strips have been archived at fan site The Charlie Chan Family Home: "Although our collection of original Charlie Chan Sunday Comics is extensive and continues to inch toward completeness when possible, there are occasional "holes," sometimes several in succession, that are filled with reproductions. When this becomes necessary, this fact is noted following that comic's original release date." By the way, following the cancellation of Charlie Chan, cartoonist Andriola went on to create Kerry Drake in 1943. The series won a Reuben Award in 1970, and continued all the way until the creator's death in 1983

(free-comics-online.blogspot.com)

Tony Millionaire

Tony Millionaire (born Scott Richardson, 1956) is an American cartoonist, illustrator and author known for his syndicated comic strip Maakies and the Sock Monkey series of comics and picture books. Millionaire was born in Boston and grew up in and around the seaside town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. He came from a family of artists – his father was a commercial illustrator, his mother and grandparents were painters – and was encouraged to draw from an early age. His grandfather, who was a friend of the cartoonist Roy Crane, had a large collection of old Sunday comics which were an early source of inspiration to Millionaire. He drew his first comic strip, "about an egg-shaped superhero who flew around talking about how great he was and then crashing into a cliff," when he was nine years old. At age 13 he lost his natural front teeth in a car accident; since then he has worn false teeth. During high school Millionaire continued to draw comic strips for his own amusement. After high school Millionaire attended the Massachusetts College of Art, where he majored in painting, but left without graduating after getting three quarters through his fourth year. While in college he began drawing houses in wealthy neighborhoods for money; this, along with occasional illustration jobs, would be his primary source of income for the next 20 years. After college he moved from place to place, living in Boston, Florida, California, and Italy before settling in Berlin for five years during the 1980s. Returning to the U.S. in the early '90s, he moved to Brooklyn, where he began drawing a regular comic strip, Medea's Weekend, for the Williamsburg newsweekly Waterfront Week. One night at a local bar, the Six Twelve, Millionaire drew "a cartoon about a little bird who drank booze and blew his brains out" on a napkin – the origin of his best-known character, Drinky Crow. The bartender encouraged him to draw more cartoons, offering him a free beer for each one he completed. After doing many of these cocktail napkin drawings, Millionaire began drawing more polished versions of his cartoons for publication in various zines, including Ninny, Spike Vrusho's Murtaugh and Selwyn Harris's HappyLand. He also did drawings for several trade journals and Al Goldstein's notorious tabloid Screw. Eventually the alternative newsweekly New York Press asked him to draw a weekly strip, and in 1994 Maakies debuted in its pages. It soon spread to other papers across the country. During the mid-2000s, Millionaire transferred Maakies to The Village Voice as its NYC venue, but returned it to the Press in February 2007. Besides Maakies, Millionaire has produced a series of comics and picture books collectively titled Sock Monkey. He has also occasionally contributed to comics anthologies including Legal Action Comics, Star Wars Tales, Dirty Stories, and Bizarro Comics. His illustrations are published in many leading venues including The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal. Currently he does much of the artwork, along with Charles Burns, for Dave Eggers' magazine The Believer. Animated versions of his work have been featured on Saturday Night Live, in the They Might Be Giants documentary Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns), and on Adult Swim. In 2006 Fantagraphics Books published his graphic novel Billy Hazelnuts. He is working on a children's book to be published by Hyperion. Since February 10, 2010, Millionaire's comic Maakies, has been published weekly in Nib-Lit Comics journal. Millionaire moved to Los Angeles in 1998. He currently lives in Pasadena with his wife Becky Thyre and two daughters Phoebe and Pearl. He is the brother-in-law of the artist and poet Jon Sarkin and television talk show co-host, Andy Richter.

(wikipedia.org)