I ran across a mention of Buz Sawyer and his pal, Roscoe Sweeney while clicking through links in Nov 1st's Today in Toons mailing, and I found myself a little confused about something.
I don't recall the Buz Sawyer years too clearly, as I was born in 1955, but I remember Roscoe Sweeney very well. The article about the strip, part of a larger discussion about the life of Mel Graff, had Roscoe living in suburbia and dealing with situations arising in that setting.
By the time I got around to really appreciating comics, Roscoe seemed to be living in a far more rural setting, almost farm-like, in fact. I live in Central Florida, and I could have sworn reading somewhere that the artist of Roscoe Sweeney in the mid to late 60's was a Florida native, which jibed with what I saw as landscape backgrounds in the Sunday strip. There were vast swaths of pastureland dotted here and there with patches of cypress trees around a small muskeg or swampy area, and 'way 'way off in the distance, a shadowy grey treeline, which is precisely what the countryside looked like for decades around here, and still does, in places. You've got to get really far out there to find somewhere that they haven't scraped clean to build on, these days.
So am I right on these two points? Was Roscoe a ' redneck gentleman farmer' by the 60's? and did the artist for the Sunday strip hail from Florida?
Roscoe Sweeney
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By Big Boss Man
Posted on: Nov 1st 2008 at 10:21 AM |
Replies: 4
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Posted by: Don Markstein
Posted on: 2008-11-02 at 05:21:19 AM
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Thanks for the reminiscence. The answer to your questions is a resounding I don't know.
Officially, the strip was still being done by its creator, Roy Crane, in the 1960s. But Crane had mostly retired by that time, and the Sunday, where Roscoe was the star, was being handled by his assistant, Al Wenzel. I saw only the daily during that period -- my local paper didn't carry the Sunday. But during the late '60s and early '70s, I saw a lot of out-of-town papers at work, as a feature writer for the New Orleans paper. Roscoe looked pretty suburban to me, not out-and0-out rural, but I wasn't paying much attention. I liked the dailies, where Buz himself was still the star.
I don't have any word on where either Crane or Wenzel lived during those years. All I can say is, it sounds plausible. Can anyone add further info?
Quack, Don
Officially, the strip was still being done by its creator, Roy Crane, in the 1960s. But Crane had mostly retired by that time, and the Sunday, where Roscoe was the star, was being handled by his assistant, Al Wenzel. I saw only the daily during that period -- my local paper didn't carry the Sunday. But during the late '60s and early '70s, I saw a lot of out-of-town papers at work, as a feature writer for the New Orleans paper. Roscoe looked pretty suburban to me, not out-and0-out rural, but I wasn't paying much attention. I liked the dailies, where Buz himself was still the star.
I don't have any word on where either Crane or Wenzel lived during those years. All I can say is, it sounds plausible. Can anyone add further info?
Quack, Don
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Posted by: Big Boss Man
Posted on: 2008-11-02 at 07:09:58 AM
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Well, once I had the artist's name and a vague idea of the timeline, it was a piece o' cake to get to the bottom of my own questions! [link:en.wikipedia.org]
There is enough information on this page to draw inferences about several aspects of his life and the visual quality of his art. The dramatic shading they speak of in this Wiki article is one of those things that had stuck in the corner of my subconscious, but it wasn't a clear enough memory for me to have put it into a cogent "back in my day" reminiscence.
There is enough information on this page to draw inferences about several aspects of his life and the visual quality of his art. The dramatic shading they speak of in this Wiki article is one of those things that had stuck in the corner of my subconscious, but it wasn't a clear enough memory for me to have put it into a cogent "back in my day" reminiscence.
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Posted by: Mike Curtis
Posted on: 2008-11-02 at 11:53:43 AM
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I recall one SWEENEY strip that said they were 131 miles from Kissimee. I'm sure they were set in Florida. I do recall that after the Sunday with Roscoe ended, Sweeney turned up in the BUZ SAWYER daily again to sidekick, saying baby sister had gotten married.
Mike
Mike
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Posted by: Don Markstein
Posted on: 2008-11-03 at 08:00:32 AM
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Thanks. It's sounding very much like BigBoss's info is correct -- Roscoe's landscape definitely was that of rural Florida.
Quack, Don
Quack, Don
