The Heart of Juliet Jones - June 13, 1987 (Stan Drake)

Stan Drake created his "The Heart of Juliet Jones" comic strip with writer Elliot Caplin (younger brother of Al Capp) in 1953. He would draw the daily until it was taken over by Frank Bolle in 1989.

Drake went to the Art Students League, where he learned figure-drawing from the famous artist George Bridgman. It was in this class that he met soon to be lifelong friend, Bob Lubbers. The two men would later even share a studio with John Celardo.

Stan would often reuse his previous work in these later strips by physically cutting the existing artwork or by creating stats for pasteups. These are affixed very cleanly with a series of touchups. This artwork contains a good deal of those. However, I was excited that the center panel is entirely actual original art. Featuring a nice image of our title heroine.

Bought a pair of these from legendary art collector George Hagenauer at the 2022 Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention in Lombard, Illinois. He had them priced appropriately for the pasteups. It was terrific to pick up affordable work from Stan Drake to add into the collection.