An outfit called Classic Comics Press has just announced that they'll be reprinting the full run of Leonard Starr's great newspaper strip, Mary Perkins On Stage. I think that's its official name. It's my understanding that some newspapers labelled it On Stage, some called it Mary Perkins and some used the double-barrelled moniker. By any handle, it's most deserving of collection.
The strip began on February 10, 1957 and ran until September 9, 1979. Some readers probably skipped it over, thinking it was just another soap opera. While it was occasionally that, Starr was quite determined to give himself something more exciting to draw than people kissing and crying. The storylines roamed the world, verging into taut adventure and intrigue, and those who followed one sequence usually got hooked and stuck with it forever — a modest but fiercely loyal readership. It also didn't hurt that Starr, along with his friend and occasional collaborator Stan Drake (The Heart of Juliet Jones) drew the best-looking women on the comic strip page. I'm looking forward to seeing them collected even though this could be another time I'm signing on to buy a series of books for many, many years.