The Adventures of Smilin' Jack
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Smilin' Jack was an aviation comic strip that first appeared October 1, 1933 in the Chicago Tribune and ended April 1, 1973. After a run of 40 years, it was the longest running aviation comic strip. The strip was created by 27-year-old cartoonist and aviation enthusiast Zack Mosley, who had previously worked on the Buck Rogers and Skyroads strips.
Smilin' Jack was originally Mack Martin, in On the Wing, but Chicago Tribune editor Joseph Medill Patterson did not like the original title, so on December 31, 1933, the name was changed to Jack Martin, and the strip was retitled The Adventures of Smilin' Jack after its creator, who was nicknamed "Smilin' Zack" by his colleagues.
"Smilin' Jack" developed an extremely colorful and imaginative band of supporting characters through its lengthy run, including Downwind Jaxon; Fatstuff, a humorous Hawaiian character; and eventually a Jack Jr. Jack had a number of different romantic interests, whom Mosley referred to as "de-icers." Jack faced a number of nemeses including The Claw, Toemain the Terrible, The Head and his sister, The Mongoose.
Many of the supporting characters in this strip were drawn with distinctive visual devices. The corpulent Fatstuff was always drawn with buttons popping off his tight-fitting shirt, never explaining how the buttons magically regenerated from one panel to the next. (Mosley would sometimes draw a chicken in one corner of the panel, eating one of the buttons as they flew off.) Even more distinctive was Smilin' Jack's handsome sidekick and occasional co-pilot Downwind, whose face drove women wild with passion. Downwind's features remain a mystery; he was invariably drawn with his head in three-quarters rear view so that his face was averted from the reader. Occasionally this visual device became somewhat contrived, such as whenever some villain stood in front of Downwind aiming a weapon at him: the co-pilot would still be looking back over his shoulder, as if something more interesting was happening behind him!
"Smilin' Jack" was parodied in an early issue of Mad as "Smilin' Melvin!", with Fatstuff renamed Thatstuff and Downwind renamed Tailwind. This parody offered a joke explanation for why the co-pilot's unseen face drives women wild with passion: he actually looks quite ugly, but has a $100 bill between his teeth!
"Smilin' Jack" was influential in the expansion of NASCAR racing. NASCAR founder Bill France, Sr. was Mosley's friend, so he wrote information about NASCAR's first "Strictly Stock" (now Sprint Cup) race into the strip. Drivers, throughout the United States, including race winner Jim Roper, read the strip and drove across the nation to race.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Other Media
In 1939, a Smilin' Jack radio series was broadcast.
In 1943 Universal Studios produced a The Adventures of Smilin' Jack serial based on the strip, starring Tom Brown. In that serial, Smilin' Jack Martin works with the Chinese government to stop the Black Samurai, a Japanese covert spy ring led by the German operative Fraulein von Teufel.
He also appeared in a Dell comic book.
