Tuesday 30 December 2008

Fred Ray strips

I recently bought these two strips on eBay. Both are by Fred Ray and signed "FRAY".


Notice how he uses light and shadow just like Noel Sickles did. And, yes, he was a big fan of Sickles. It was from Fred's collection Alex Toth and some other artists got their Schorcy Smith sets a long time ago.



I suspect these were drawn while he was doing his military service during the early/mid 40's. But does anyone know where these were published? If they were published at all. They seem to be aimed to people not in the army since they explain how things are in the army. If you have any clues please leave a comment.

[Edit: As a bonus here is the third strip that was sold at the same time. But I didn't get this one.]

2 comments:

Ger Apeldoorn said...

I am looking for the war time work of comic book artists on ebay ever now and again and have found some beauties (most artists say they did art for their camp newspaper bu don't mention where they were stationed`0, but this one is a beauty. I rather suspect it may not have been published, but the key is to find out where Ray was stationed and what branch he was in.

Smurfswacker said...

Wow! I didn't know Fred Ray had it in him. I only knew him from his 'Tomahawk' work, which didn't excite me. This is excellent artwork! Especially the third piece. The enthusiasm of youth, I guess.