Me and Leonard Starr.

Me and Leonard Starr.

If I had to pick a favorite moment at Comic-Con International, it’d be easy. Except it wasn’t a moment. It was more like two or three hours. I had lunch the first day and drinks later that night with a personal hero: Leonard Starr.

Leonard created, wrote and drew one of the best adventure comic strips of all time: On Stage With Mary Perkins. I don’t think a more gorgeous strip was ever drawn. The sheer beauty of the art and the fact that the main character was a stage and movie actress might have made some people mistake it as a soap opera comic.

1964_08_24onepanel

But if it was a soap opera, you didn’t notice as soon as you started reading it. Adventure, mystery, drama, humor–On Stage was like a movie from Hollywood’s golden era. Great scenery and production values; top-notch, bigger-than-life actors; and a story that had just the right mixture of human interest, suspense and humor.

1964_03_16panel1

If doing On Stage for over 20 years wasn’t enough, Leonard went on to write and draw Annie (the revamped version of Little Orphan Annie) for another tw0-plus decades. But it was On Stage that changed my life…

1964_03_16panel21964_03_16panel3

Don’t believe me? Well, at some point during my first date with Shelagh, the subject of favorite comic strips came up. (Probably because she knew I was a comics geek.) And the one strip that we both loved was On Stage. Of course, it’s a well known fact that if you find a woman who shares your taste in comics–well, you better marry her.

So…thanks, Leonard!

(On Stage art copyright of respective copyright holder.)