Classic Comics Press has just brought out the sixth volume
in its series reprinting all of Leonard Starr’s Mary Perkins On Stage, March 10, 1963 - October 11, 1964 (264
8.5x11-inch landscape-bound pages, b/w dailies and Sundays; paperback, $24.95)
and the second volume in Stan Drake’s Heart of Juliet Jones series, August 15, 1955 - November 30, 1957
(248 8.5x11-inch landscape-bound pages, daily only, b/w; paperback, $24.95). 
These two strips are half of the entire roster of comic strips superbly drawn
in the realistic illustrative manner (the other two, Harold Foster’s Prince
Valiant and all of Alex Raymond’s four
strips, Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, Secret
Agent X-9, and Rip Kirby), and
the reproduction in both these volumes is exquisite: fineline feathering is not
matted, blotched or lost altogether, solid blacks are solid, gray tones (in
Juliet Jones) and other stylistic variations (ditto) are all here, better
displayed than in any of the newprint incarnations of yore. Starr is easier to
capture in this regard than Drake, who deploys numerous variations in linear
treatment. In his introduction to On
Stage, cartoonist Batton Lash
spends a suitable amount of time praising and analyzing Starr’s artwork;
cartoonist Howard Chaykin in his
introduction to Juliet Jones stresses
mostly the high quality of the stories as classy soap opera.
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